A Burning Vengeance
by DJ Dynamite
Summary: The sequel to "A Rising Flame". Four years later, a disgraced super is killing off other supers. Who are the targets, what is the reason behind the murders, and can the fallen hero be stopped before more die?
1. The Smoldering Embers of Vengeance

_**Author's Note: Well, many of you asked for this, and now here it is, the sequel to "A Rising Flame".**_

 _ **Admittedly, it took longer to write than expected, both because of the development phase and the fact I took a long break from writing. Anyway, I'm still amazed that so many of you loved the first story so much that you wanted a sequel, and I can't thank you enough for it. For new readers, while this story can be read on its own, it's strongly recommended that you read the first one to better understand this one. Again, thanks for your support and here we go. Disclaimers: This story will be rated 'T' mainly for language, but could possibly change. The Incredibles are owned and copyrighted by Disney/Pixar.**_

 **A Burning Vengeance**

 **Prologue**

" _ **What is the single line that divides superheroes and supervillains? Many would say morality. In many cases, that can be a very strong line. However, we also know that morals can easily change, and that's almost always due to outside forces and influences. That's just as much true for supers as it is for regular people. Keep in mind, no super has fought anywhere for fifteen years. That's a long time to be sitting idle and then be called back into service, plenty of time to pass for personal beliefs to change. That's not even considering younger supers who never fought at all during that time. As this act goes into effect, we wish them godspeed on their return and hope for future successes in crimefighting, but we must also keep in the backs of our minds the awareness of probable consequences of these people being inactive for so long, and the possibility that today's super-powered heroes could become tomorrow's super-powered enemies."**_

 **-Statement from U.S. Senator Robert Calhoun, just before the** **authorization of the Congressional Superhero Reinstatement Act.**

 **-January 1, 1976**

* * *

 **National Supers Agency Ultra Maximum Administrative Detention Facility (UMAX)**

 **Location: CLASSIFIED**

 **Tuesday, November 30, 1999**

 **10:00 a.m.**

Up. Down. Up. Down.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Focusing on a single spot on the floor, watching it move towards and then away from my eyes.

Push-ups, one of my top ways to keep both body and mind strong. It was also a great time killer, and in a place like this, time was just about the only thing one never really ran out of here. And believe me, I knew _all_ about time.

Ten years, three months, and fifteen days.

That was the entire length of my stay there at the Incarceration Inn, with all the _great_ perks that came with it. Want another example of knowing all about time?

Eleven years, one month, and three days.

That was the length of time that passed since "The Night" that ended up punching my reservation to this place. I relived that moment almost every night since then, saw the faces of those involved in my normal and waking dreams. The feelings that I felt that night, shock, anger, betrayal, continued to be just as strong more than eleven years later. I quite often found myself wondering how each of them felt back then, knowing they had effectively destroyed a person's life and credibility. Did they even care? Probably not. They were almost certainly carrying on with their lives, both personal and super, without sparing me even a fleeting thought inside that wet matter between their ears that they called brains. And even if gave me the luxury of a second of a thought, they almost certainly would've thought of me as just another "criminal" they locked up, just another small notch on their belts, another so-called "nuisance" removed from "polite" society like a scuff mark on a well polished shoe. And then they went and told their lies about what supposedly happened that night and the public ate it all up like some delicious dessert and treated these traitors like the "heroes" they were meant to be. Give me a frigging break, seriously.

And, oh yeah, let's talk about that so-called adoring public while we're on that topic. The general, ordinary people, ever so loving, ever so caring, ever so happy, ever so grateful that we supers were back once again to take on the punishment of crime so they can feel safe in their own little protected worlds. That's what everyone made it out to be, anyway, so it must had all been true, right?

* _ **BUZZ!***_

 _ **Wrong!**_ Want to hear the real answer to what they really were from probably the only super whose eyes had been opened? I'll let you in on that tiny secret with just two little words.

Fucking. Hypocrites.

Yeah, there, I said it, and I totally meant it. I wouldn't be afraid to call them out on it, either, in front of a camera that broadcasted live to every corner of the world. Someone had to, anyway, to turn that fake golden halo into a lead ball and chain of truth. What were they gonna do, throw a tiny hissy fit, claim hurt feelings, threaten to ban supers again? Too damn bad. If one super who had the balls to tell them that cold hard truth to their faces shattered those immensely fragile tiny hearts of theirs, then that was their problem, no one elses.

So I'm guessing you want to know why I said that, don't you? Okay, let's begin. See, back in 1960, a series of bullshit lawsuits from ungrateful little pricks against supers who were a little busy saving their worthless asses led to the people and government saying, _"We don't need you anymore. We can handle things ourselves."_ , which they failed spectacularly at in many cases, I should add. And then, fifteen years later, when that whiny little brat Syndrome appeared with his walking balls of death and the Incredibles spanked his ass, those same people were like, _"_ _Come back, supers! All's forgiven!"_ And so, supers came back and began cleaning up the criminal scum that the so-called geniuses couldn't get rid of. All was well, everything's peachy keen and smelled like roses, and everyone lived happily ever after, right?

 _*_ _ **BUZZ!***_

 _ **Wrong again!**_ Just as predictable as the sunrise, the whining and bitching came back in full force right from the very first second. _"_ _They're still a danger to the public! They're taking good paying jobs from the police and military! We were still doing great without them!"_ Blah, blah, blah. Yep, the same shitty song and dance we'd heard for decades. Almost deliciously hilarious that it's usually the ones who bitch the loudest who are also the ones up at the front of the line screaming and sobbing for our help when everything went south. Even during my days of "fighting the good fight", there were still ever increasing times when I just wanted to say, _"_ _Screw_ _it. Just_ _screw_ _it all.",_ walk away or just sit on the sidelines and watch those little crybabies have a crack at it. How long would they had lasted against Syndrome, Underminer, or the Atomizer? If I was a betting person, which I was, I would say a minute against the Underminer, thirty three seconds against Syndrome's omnidroids, and just two seconds against the Atomizer's nuke cannon. Have fun, guys.

But enough about them. They were no longer worth it. So after ten years, three months, and fifteen days of residency at that place and going under the name of SIRN-79344, all of that was about to end. And right on time, I heard the familiar electric whirring followed by the loud metallic clangs of the twelve locks that secured the other door of my cell unlocking.

I stood up and threw on my standard prison issue T-shirt as the door slid open and two guards stepped into my cell. Two tall mounds of muscle with enough body armor to rival tanks and topped with a helmet with a mirrored face plate. Supposedly the idea was to make them as cold and soulless as the rest of that little corner of hell on Earth, and it would had probably been enough to make a weakling regular inmate piss their pants. For me, having gone up against the toughest of the tough once upon a time ago, those _'_ _ooh we're so big and tough_ _and ballsy_ _in our super fancy get up'_ posers didn't warrant anything more than a roll of my eyes, if even that. Not like all of that would've done them any good if I really wanted to stage a breakout. Two seconds. That's all the time it would've taken for me to lay them out. There was a reason why I was considered one of the most feared and respected supers among criminals.

But they had nothing to worry about, that time. Instead, one of them used his stun baton to tap twice against the barred secondary door that separated me from them. With a grunt and a roll of my eyes, I held out my fists close to the door while another guard brought out my favorite jewelry: specially made handcuffs. No, I didn't mean all binged out or something like that. No, I meant they were custom made to deal with my unique powers, not to mention give me a nice and little knockout zap if I stepped out of line.

Once they clamped the cuffs shut around my wrists, the barred door slid open, after which the men entered my cell, grabbed me by my biceps, and somewhat forcibly pulled me out into the hall. In the past, that would had pissed me off to a great deal, but most of the time these days I just let it go, especially that day as it was going to be the last time.

Like every time before, there were four other guards standing just outside the cell, my own little personal entourage, so to speak. Together, the six of them marched me down the endless, soulless, cold, and sterile labyrinth of hell that was known as UMAX. What's that, you ask? Well, ever wondered where all those supervillains ended up after getting their asses kicked, the ones who were still alive afterwards, anyway? They got sent there, a place built to handle the worst of the worst, the most powerful of people. People like me, in other words, or the latter half of that, anyway. I was among the most powerful, but not among the worst. Okay, not that I knew of, I should add to that.

See, there was this very unique thing about UMAX. Not only was it the most secure prison ever built, it was also the most classified. The only thing the rest of the world knew about it was the fact that it existed. Outside of that, no one knew where it was, how big it was, how many prisoners were there, the works. Even I couldn't help you out on that front. I knew my own area well enough, but not much else. I can tell you that it had its own barber shop, for all the times I needed my hair cut. It also had a psych office, you know, for all of those _**"**_ _ **extremely important"**_ bonding sessions by docs who try to act like they're the greatest buddies in the world when you know all they're really doing was psychoanalyzing the shit out of you. There was an outdoor rec area, but it was built in such a way that you couldn't even tell where the sun was in the sky, obviously again to help keep UMAX's location top secret. Clever guys, the architects and builders. Kudos to them.

As for neighbors, dunno. I never met or even seen any, for the entirety of my stay. Yeah, I know how shocking that must sound, especially to inmates, former or current, of other prisons, but that was just another ordinary thing about UMAX. No meeting anyone in mess, since every single one of my meals had been delivered to me in my cell, and no one to mess around with outside in the rec. I wasn't the only unwilling house guest there, that much was for certain, but beyond that, I could've had dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of neighbors, for all I knew. It definitely made for a quiet place, that was for sure.

After passing through a few more doors and checkpoints, we entered an elevator that was at the end of the block. One of the guards then opened a panel and, out of my view, tapped a series of buttons and the elevator started moving. Another one of UMAX's tricks. See, the elevators there didn't have simple up and down buttons to change floors. Instead, each floor had a certain code that needed to be entered for the elevator to go there. So, let's say you didn't enter the right code. What would go down then? Well, for one, the entire shaft would lock down, and two, a "non-lethal" or "lethal" response would be enforced. I wasn't supposed to know all that, of course, but it's amazing what little things you can piece together over a ten year period.

The doors opened up to another area of the prison and, once again, we went through a maze of halls and checkpoints. Daedalus, the guy who built the real Labyrinth, would be creaming himself if he saw that place. All of that led to a sizable room with a couple of benches and nothing else. The world's crappiest waiting area? Nah, that was just the outprocessing room, the final stop before checking out. No guy behind bulletproof glass sliding you a clipboard with a piece of paper to put your X on in that place, though. Instead, a computer panel slid out from one of the walls and flashed on, showing my real name, my super name, other personal stuff, yada, yada, yada, my clothes that I wore on my first day there, which included a black leather jacket, a T-shirt, jeans, boots, etc., etc. To confirm, place your thumb on the screen, it said, which I did, although it was fun trying to do that with my hands bounded so closely together. After the confirmation beep, a panel opened up next to it and out came all my stuff, a decade older and encased in vacuum-sealed plastic to preserve that perfect freshness. It would had been nice for me to hold them and give them a look over, but one of the guards decided to do the honor himself. The asshole. Still, it would had been, maybe, a little difficult to hold onto my stuff with my handcuffed hands without stumbling all over them. But that didn't mean I had to accept it.

From there, I was led across the room and down a corridor to yet another elevator. After a short ride, the doors opened up to reveal a single high security checkpoint. It was separated into two sections, with six guards on each side, plus a few turrets, and almost certainly a few hidden extra goodies that were spread around. Yep, it was needless to say that if I screwed up a little, my ass wouldn't be grass, but the fertilizer which grew the grass.

But, of course, nothing that exciting happened as I continued to be a good dangerous prisoner and passed through both of the last checkpoints without any fireworks. The final stop on my exit tour was in front of a massive pair of solid metal doors just a short distance away. What that metal was, I didn't know or cared. Probably something to stop anything, for all I knew. What really mattered was when those doors opened, surprising fast for doors of their size, and revealed a hangar, complete with my ride away from there, a small white jet with no markings of any kind. It clearly wasn't Pan Am, that was for sure.

At least six more guards surrounded the plane as I was led towards its front door. One again, my eyes took in everything and my mind processed them into theoretical scenarios. Twelve guys, plus an unknown number on the plane. Through a mixed use of tactics, power use, and physical moves, probably ten seconds max to take them all out if need be. Don't worry, I wasn't anywhere near suicidal enough to try anything there, unless they were the ones who started it. I mean, yeah, I was an extremely hard person to kill, but I wasn't even close to being immortal. But no, it was just something that I did, many times unconsciously, ever since my active super days. Always be alert, that was what we had drilled into us. Even in prison, that phrase and those senses never went away. After all, you never knew when they would come in handy again, there in that place or sometime in the future.

Once we arrived at the plane's door, the unwanted entourage that had been dogging me since my cell finally decided to make themselves scarce, only for their six other buddies to pick up the slack. I figured it was too much to ask not to feel like I was a steer being herded somewhere, which was exactly what it seemed like when getting on the plane. For the criminally naive, if they expected a completely tricked out luxury jet with leather seats, TVs, and cute attendants serving champagne, then they were SOL. Nope, it was just the complete opposite, about as spartan and no-frills as you could possibly get. It didn't even have windows, except for the obvious ones up in the cockpit. Like I said, Pan Am, it was not.

I was "helped" into one of the seats and then secured with just a regular seat belt. Contrary to what many thought, they weren't flying jail cells, due to those pesky fed laws and all that. Either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid, who knew. The guards then took their seats. Not long after, the door was shut, the engines spooled up, and the plane began to move. A few minutes later, I felt the plane accelerate and then take off.

So with no in-flight movies, no windows, or whatever else that could pass off for entertainment, I just slouched down in my seat, crossed my feet, closed my eyes, and just lost myself in my thoughts. As someone who was blessed, or cursed, depending on your point of view, with a hyperactive mind, it was extremely easy for me to just sink myself into my incredibly vivid and detailed imagination and thoughts basically at will. That great mind of mine gave me countless hours of fun and entertainment as a kid, proved so invaluable during my super years, and kept my sanity from going completely to shit during my time in prison. At that moment, what my mind was providing me was a way of just passing time, and thinking of...future plans…

Whether I was just that completely deep in my thoughts, or it was just that short of a flight, or both, it felt like hardly any time had passed before the pilot came over the comm and told us to prepare for landing. I had just enough time to come out of my thoughts and sit back up in my seat before the plane touched back down on the ground. We seemed to taxi for a while before we stopped and the engines shut down. The guards got out of their seats, pulled me out of mine, and basically herded me to the door. Once the door opened, and my eyes had to adjust to the shock and fact that they hadn't seen the actual sun for over ten years, I saw where we landed and immediately recognized it as Bird Field, Metroville's secondary airport. It used to be the main one a long time ago before they built the much larger international one. These days it was mostly used for domestic and regional flights, plus the NSA used it for prisoner transfers as well. They even built a terminal in the most remote part of the airport for that very purpose, and that was where I was being to right then.

The entrance into the terminal was through two security doors. On the other side of those doors was a large room with just a couple more security doors directly across from the first, four large pillars, and some windows facing out onto the tarmac and that was it. Some people could had possibly mistaken it for the most spartan waiting area of any airport, only it wasn't. For prisoners of UMAX, it was either the embarking point or the disembarking point, and for me, it was the end of the line. After holding out a computer pad for me to place my hand to confirm a few final things, one of the guards motioned for me to hold my hands out. He then put in a code on my restraints and they released. Another guard handed me my still sealed up clothing, which I took with one of my now freed hands. Most of the guards then left back through the doors we came in through, but one stayed behind.

"Look, I won't pretend to know the whole story of what happened that night," he said to me. "All we still know is that something went wrong and people got killed. But no matter what, many of us still remember all the great things you did back then and they shouldn't be forgotten. Just because you can no longer be a super doesn't mean you can't be a hero. You can still do a lot of great things with your normal identity now. Just something you should consider.. Take care of yourself out there."

My glare was the only acknowledgment of the whole thing as I was in no mood for any of that preachy crap. After he left to join his buddies, I exited through the other doors and went into the nearby restroom to change. A few minutes later, I reemerged wearing the clothes which I wore the day that I turned myself in all those years, only they were now a little bit tight, probably due to all the exercising and bulking up I did while in prison. I was definitely going to have to shop for new threads later on. I then tossed my prison clothes into the nearby recycling chute.

Looking up at the nearby clock, I noted the time. After ten years, three months, fifteen days, eleven hours, and thirty-eight minutes, I was officially an ex-con, and a permanent ex-super. I closed my eyes, took a deep inhale and then let out a slow exhale of the air of freedom.

" _ **We'**_ _ **re**_ _ **back,**_ _ **did you hear? They're letting us back out there! This is gonna be so awesome, you know. It's our turn now, and we'll take this city by storm, you and I. We'll be the team everyone'll be talking about.,**_ _ **you'll see...**_ _ **"**_

I scowled and shook my head to clear the unwanted memory from my brain before I headed for the exit, wanting to blow that place as quickly as possible. As I approached the exit, I noticed a guy in a suit who was holding a sign with my name on it. I approached him and nodded my head. He returned the nod and led me out onto the lot, where a black limo awaited us. I took a moment to admire its sleek lines. Car design had clearly changed in ten years.

" _ **Do you think we'll need a car?"**_

" _ **What?"**_

" _ **A car. Many supers, even my parents, had some sort of super car back then. Maybe we'll need one for ourselves."**_

" _ **Um, in case you've forgotten, neither of us actually need a car to get around in."**_

" _ **I know that, but I'm thinking of situations that could come up where we'd need one. We may need to carry around extra gear, or a way to transport any criminals we catch, or just in case others join us."**_

" _ **What, thinking of expansion already?"**_

" _ **No, not right now, but you never know. Are you against it?"**_

" _ **Not really, I suppose. I guess I'm still thinking that it'll be just the two of us. I mean, it's been like that forever, you know."**_

" _ **And it's still gonna be like that. Friends to the end, right?"**_

" _ **To the end. So, a car, huh? Well, I guess it never hurts to be prepared. Okay, let's bounce around a few ideas..."**_

Once again, another memory that I had to clear from my thoughts as the man opened the rear door for me and I climbed in, once again admiring the sleekness that seemed to extend into the inside as well. The man closed the door, went up to the driver's seat, and soon we were off.

We had just barely left the airport property when the phone that was right next to me started to ring. I picked it up, already knowing who was on the line.

"P, that you?" I answered.

" _None other,"_ the heavily distorted electronic voice replied. _"How are you enjoying your newfound freedom?"_

"Don't know yet. Ask me on New Year's. Nice ride you sent me, by the way."

" _Figured you needed something fancy after all that time in that hellhole._ _So I take it you're still planning on going through with it all."_

"Without a doubt. Is it all set up?"

" _Of course. Everything you need is ready. Still not too late to back out."_

"Not a chance. Justice needs to be done, if not through anyone else, then by me."

" _Okay. Just remember, from here on out, you're on your own._ _I have no knowledge of any of this, understand?"_

"Understood. Just wanna say, though, no matter what happens, thanks for sticking up for me. You've had my back since the beginning."

" _No problem. Take care of yourself out there and watch that back of yours."_

"You bet. Hey, if all this goes down right, maybe we'll have a beer or something together."

" _We'll see."_

The call ended and I hung up. Speaking of booze, I wondered if there was any in the limo. It didn't take long to find the mini fridge that was nearby, and inside was a champagne bottle. There were those fancy flutes around, but I didn't bother with them at all as I just grabbed the bottle, popped the cork, and directly chugged from it. Hey, champagne was champagne, didn't matter how you drank it.

After my third swig, I finally looked out the window and at the surroundings. We were driving through the heart of the city right then, and I instantly recognized old and familiar landmarks but also took note of brand new ones. The city of Metroville had certainly changed a lot in the last decade. A sight that hadn't changed at all were the many people who were walking around the area. To think, a dozen years earlier, I was out there protecting most of them with my life…

" ** _It's not going to hold!"_**

" _ **Hurry up! Move your asses! I can't keep this up all day, you know!"**_

" _ **You did it! We saved them all!"**_

" _ **That was without doubt the greatest thing I've ever seen!"**_

" ** _It's my greatest pleasure and honor to give this year's award to a super who's truly deserving of it, a super who went well above and beyond the call of duty to save the lives of two dozen people from certain death. It was truly the greatest act of heroism seen in quite some time. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I present you, our 1986 Superhero of the Year-"_**

With a loud grunt, I forced the memories away, turned from the window, and took a long drink from the bottle. None of that mattered anymore. That was a long time ago and in another life. A time and a life when I honestly and truly cared for all of those people, so much so that I'd spent twelve long years risking everything for them. Then, "The Night" happened and it all changed. Now, I no longer gave a crap what happened to those worthless, ungrateful asswipes. A building could had collapsed right then, trapping hundreds, and I would had just continued on drinking and enjoying the changing scenery. Besides, my full attention was focused elsewhere anyway.

We left the city behind and headed towards the heavily wooded hills that were to the west of Metroville. If there was anything that never seemed to change, it were those hills. I spent a lot of time as a kid and a teen hiking and camping in them. They were even a go to spot in my super days for when I just wanted to get away from all the crap for a little bit. And now, I was going to call them home, at least for a time. How long a time, well, depended on how things went over the next few weeks.

The way to my new pad was up a small winding road that branched off from the highway, and I was actually quite impressed by the way the driver maneuvered the long limo up that very steep and narrow path so effortlessly and expertly. However, the road didn't reach all the way up to the place, so he had to park some distance away and I would have to hike from there. Didn't bother me any bit, though. I wanted isolation, and that was what I had gotten.

After we both exited the limo, the driver opened up the trunk and handed me a duffel bag. He than tapped out a code on some kind of handheld device and a small door opened up on the floor of the trunk, revealing a hidden compartment underneath. He reached in, pulled out a specialized metal briefcase, and handed it to me. He nodded, shook my hand, and then got back into the limo and drove off.

Swinging the bag over my shoulder, I turned and headed into the very thick woods and up an extremely narrow path. I made sure to mentally map every single inch of terrain along the path. Never knew when that would come in handy. After about a half-mile hike, the path ended at a clearing that was on top of one of the taller hills in the area, and in the middle of that clearing was my new home. It was simply a modern log cabin with some nice goodies added, or at least, that was what I was told. Still, it was perfect, and I really had to thank P for that set up, and other things.

The front door didn't have a lock or key, but that was fine. There was a nice little magic trick to open it. Going off a one-time memory, I grabbed the door handle and turned it to the left for two seconds, then to the right for one second, back to the left for four seconds, and finally to the right again for three seconds. A panel to the right of the door slid open and revealed a hand scanner. I placed my hand on the scanner, and after a confirmation beep, the door opened up by itself.

"Hmm, cute," I muttered.

I did an inspection of the place, which took all of a minute because the entire cabin consisted of a living room, kitchen, bathroom and a bedroom and that was it. My dorm back in college was bigger. But like I said, it wasn't going to be a permanent stay.

"It'll do," I said to myself.

The cabin had a back door, which led out to a raised deck. Stepping out onto the deck, I instantly noticed that the tree coverage was thin there, which allowed me to see the city beyond. Placing one hand on the metal railing and drinking some more out of the bottle, I let my eyes gaze across Metroville, taking in all the sights and locations. And then, my eyes stopped at one spot and instantly narrowed. _The_ spot, the location where it all happened…

" _ **What happened? Oh my**_ _ **g**_ _ **od, what have you done?"**_

" _ **This is**_ _ **so**_ _ **not good.**_ _ **Not good at all."**_

" _ **We can explain this to everyone."**_

" _ **I warned you. I warned you this could happen, and you didn't listen."**_

" _ **Look, just...just turn yourself in, okay? They'll help you. We all can."**_

" _ **By the power granted to me, I am placing you under arrest."**_

" _ **DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!"**_

 _CRASH!_

The sound of glass shattering and a sharp pain in my hand brought me out of those thoughts. Looking down, I saw that I had squeezed my hand so tightly I had crushed the bottle, sending shards of glass, champagne, and drops of blood onto the deck. My hand was cut open in a few spots, but that was fine, because it had immediately started to heal itself. The cuts sealed themselves, and any glass that had been embedded were pushed out. In less than ten seconds, any trace of an injury was the blood that was left behind. Ah, super healing, had to love it.

That wasn't all, though. The part of the metal railing that my other hand had been resting on was also crushed in, compressed to about a quarter of its original size. Super strength, now that was a double edged sword if there ever was one. Perfect for many situations, but could also bite you in the ass in many situations as well.

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths to calm myself. I hated how much that night still affected me so strongly, even after eleven years. That had to stop, and maybe, just maybe, if what I had planned for almost that same length of time actually worked, it would go a long way towards ending the nightmares, the waking dreams, all that crap. Slowly, I opened my eyes and once again looked back out at Metroville with a much clearer state of mind.

" _ **DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!"**_

 _ **Yeah,**_ I thought. _**Yeah, I understand. All too**_ _ **goddamned**_ _ **well, Mickey…**_

With that, I turned around and headed back inside. I walked to a panel that was just outside of the kitchen, opened it up, and then flicked a series of switches to on. They activated the cabin's solar powered batteries as well as a few extra goodies. I then took the briefcase and went back into the bedroom, where there was a tiny area that also doubled as a work space. I placed the case on the desk, sat down, and opened it. It only opened for me because it had scanned my bio signature the moment I first touched the handle and knew I was one of only three people authorized for it, the other two being the limo driver and P. For anyone else, it they tried to open it, it would instantly dissolve any contents inside with the added bonus of killing that same person. A nice security feature, good enough that I'd probably use it as my personal travel case if I ever went on vacation.

Inside the case were five folders. Each one had a name, the names of the five other supers who were with me that night, the traitorous assholes who conveniently left out important details of what truly happened, which made them get off scot-free while I was the only one who ended up wasting away in prison. They may had forgotten, the city may had forgotten, but I never did. Inside each folder was info on their activities over the last eleven years, accurate up to two days ago. P did some truly excellent work.

I pulled out the folders and flipped through them before taking one out and placing it aside. Then, with the remaining four, I shuffled them like cards before pulling one out at random.

The first one up who was going to face my personal justice?

Kyra Wolverton, a.k.a. Blazestone.


	2. Reintroductions

_**Author's note: Something I actually forgot to mention in the prologue is that this story will be told from multiple viewpoints. The point of view in the prologue was obviously from the villain. From now on, the POVs will be marked. Sorry for the confusion. Also, this chapter will have some slight spoilers for Incredibles 2, just in case people have yet to see it (great movie, by the way). Anyway, thanks.**_

 **Chapter 1**

 **Metroville**

 **Saturday, December 4**

 **3:07 p.m.**

 _ **Jess's POV**_

There I was, standing out in the middle of the deserted street, but I wasn't alone. Standing directly across from me was one of the strongest opponents I'd faced off against in quite a while. He was a tall man in a camouflaged suit with a metal helmet, breastplate, and gauntlets. Yeah, he was going to be a tough one, alright, but nothing I couldn't handle. I'd taken on people worse than him before. Still, I wasn't going to be cocky at all about it. If there was anything I'd learned, it's that you never underestimate any opponent, because the moment you did was the moment you got hurt, or killed.

We stood there in our fighting stances and just stared each other down for a while until, on cue, we charged at each other. He tried to get in the first hits with a right fist, which I easily ducked. He immediately tried again with his left fist, but that time I took advantage. I was able to grab his outstretched arm and quickly followed through with a few hard knees to his chest before I flipped him over my shoulder and onto the ground.

Almost instantly, he was back up on his feet and we were right back to fighting. For the next few moments, we were matching each other fist for fist, blow for blow, with few misses and blocks and were just trying to get an advantage, to hit the areas where it would really hurt. However, he took complete advantage of a missed left hook to deliver a mule kick to my stomach, and then instantly followed that up with a roundhouse kick right to my face, which sent me to the ground and left me dazed and confused. He then tried to go for the knockout blow by jumping up into the air and attempting to land on my face with a hard boot. I was able to roll out of the way a split second before his foot came crashing down onto the pavement. I then attempted to swing my leg out and sweep his legs out from under him, but he jumped well clear.

We separated and, for the next few seconds, we just stared at each other as we tried to regain our strength. Then, very suddenly, he picked up a nearby manhole cover and threw it in my direction. I was barely able to duck it, only to get hit directly in the face with a mailbox that he'd pulled out of the ground and flung my way. Ow, that one hurt. I got up, shook it off, and glared at him. I was _pissed._ I was holding back, but not anymore. If he was going to use weapons, then I was going to bring my own firepower to that fight.

I quickly formed my aura and flew up into the air. I then let loose with a barrage of fireballs from both hands. That attack forced him to scramble for cover behind a nearby car. I then flew around to press my advantage, but he moved around to the other side, and then he actually ripped the entire rear passenger door off its hinges to use as a shield. I probably could had just flown around and blasted it to pieces from above, but instead I landed and then let loose a full force fire stream from both hands. I could only do that for a few seconds because it was so draining to my body, but it was more than enough to turn the improvised shield into molten metal and glass. The moment that he was forced to drop the door was the moment I crashed into him in a literal flying tackle that sent both of us speeding across someone's front yard and through the side of their house, where we crashed into a large couch. He was sent to the floor while I was catapulted over it. Using the momentum to my advantage, I did a twist in the air and did a perfect super landing a few feet away.

It was time to end that fight for good. I moved towards him, ready to use a move that would had left him incapacitated. However, he suddenly moved out of the way at the last moment, did a backwards roll, and then kicked out the nearby supporting beam, which caused that part of the house to collapse. I couldn't get out of the way fast enough and was partially buried by the debris. I couldn't move, couldn't do anything. The only thing I could do was watch helplessly as he picked up a nearby bookcase and then he slammed it down on top of my head.

Everything went white, then faded to black, and then…

" _ **K.O.!"**_

"Dammit!" I cursed, slamming the game controller down into my lap.

"Yes!" my good friend Leon Harding exclaimed as he pumped his fist in the air. Then, with an over-the-top announcer's voice, he said, "Somehow, the Chameleon snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and beat his arch rival Phoenicia in brutal combat to break the tie! Let's hear it for the Chameleon!"

"Yay," I barely muttered under my breath with an added roll of my eyes. But I wasn't going to be a sore loser. With a sigh and then a smile as big as I could manage, which probably involved moving the corners of my mouth a millimeter or two at best, I said, "Good game, Leon."

"Yeah, great game, Jess," he agreed, and then we grasped hands and shook on it.

I was spending a good part of the day at the Harding household, and for the past hour or so, Leon and I were playing Ultimate Super Melee 3, the latest chapter in the award-winning, record-breaking, superhero slaughtering franchise. At least, that's what the tagline on its box read. But anyway, it was basically your standard one-on-one fighting game, but unlike most other games in that genre, it used real people as its combatants. In that case, it was real superheroes and supervillains, both from the present and the past. The latest version was special, at least to us, because it was the first one that added our own super personas to the roster. Admittedly, it was very awesome, and very strange, to play a version of yourself in a video game, especially since they allowed customization. For example, Leon decked out his in-game persona with heavy armor, which made him look more like a battle hardened mercenary compared to how he actually looked in uniform. As for my character, I added synthetic wings, a beak-shaped helmet, and hand gauntlets that looked like talons. They were obviously not things I'd wear for real, but hey, sometimes it was nice to just go all out, even if it was just in a video game.

So after our two-out-of-three matchup in the game, I stood up from the couch in their living room and said, "Well, this was fun and all, but I have to get going. Too bad. I would've relished another chance to kick your butt."

He let out a bark of laughter as he also stood up. "Yeah, right. In your dreams, Jess. But yeah, I'll call you later, okay?"

"Okay. See you later."

We embraced in a quick hug and then I give him a light kiss on the cheek. Yeah, I said we were good friends earlier, but we were actually in that midway point between friendship and couple. We were still not quite ready for that next step, but we both knew we were getting there. After the hug, I left their house and started the short walk back to my own home, enjoying the milder-than-normal late fall weather as I did so.

I suppose that point was a good time to do a reintroduction, or just a regular introduction for those new to the tale. My name was Jessica Wells. By most appearances, I was an ordinary 18-year-old girl who was trying to survive the glorious, if not frantic, life of college. Ah, if only trying to earn an excellent degree was my only battle in life. Admittedly, it'd be a very boring life, because I'd gotten very spoiled over the last few years.

That was where my ordinary life ended, because I had another side as well. I was also a super, known throughout the super world as Phoenicia. My abilities were fire-based, which included shooting bolts or streams of fire from my hands, actual flight, and, under the most extreme of cases, creating a fire vortex. Together with my friends Leon and Chance Harding, who were also supers known respectively as Chameleon and Changeling, we were the super team called the Triangle. We operated primarily in Metroville, but we also did some services in Municiberg, Centralia, and a few other places in the area. We came together pretty much by accident four years ago when we stumbled upon strange happenings that were going on in the corporation known as Advanced Technologies, Incorporated. The full story of that wild and crazy night we had inside their testing facility had already been told, so I won't be going much into that.

But you're obviously wondering what super activities we'd been up to since then. Well, I'll explain it like this. You know that old saying, ' _Nothing will match that very first high?'_ In our case, that was very much true. Nothing we did in the four years afterwards even came close to the absolutely incredible events and accomplishments that happened on that first night. That wasn't to say that everything else we did weren't great. We'd done the regular super things: stopping carjackers, bank robbers, shoplifters, as well as other crimes. We'd also saved people from wrecked vehicles, damaged or burning homes, and a few other areas. Every single one of those times was worth it, and seeing the looks of gratitude on the faces of the people you saved made you feel like the greatest person in the world. In their eyes, you probably really were the greatest person in the world. That, more than anything, was what made me want to put on my uniform whenever I could and go out there and risk my life, just to see those smiles and happy tears and know I'd made a difference.

Of course, being a super also exposed you to other things. One of those things was media. I mean, supers had always been large part of pop culture since the very beginning, but even that didn't come close to how much it had grown over the last couple of decades. The rise of the internet and social media made even that explode a million-fold over the last few years alone. Superheroes were rapidly becoming superstars, and my friends and I were on the verge of getting swept up in all of that. Obviously, our super personas being included in a video game was just a start. We hadn't been asked to guest star in any major movies or shows, yet, but we did appear in local endorsement ads. For me personally, I appeared in seven such ads over the last few years, five of them in the current year alone. While the compensation money was great, mainly funding the few things in college that my scholarships couldn't, part of me always wondered, whatever happened to us just being crime fighters?

There was another thing I was exposed to, and not in a good way. The anti-super sentiment that was still quite prominent among certain groups of people. I knew what I was getting into when I first decided to do this, and honestly, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Pro-super feelings were very much in the majority out there, and as for the anti-super ones, I'd quickly learned to take those in stride. However, there was one incident that I still thought about constantly.

It happened almost a year ago to the day. The three of us had stopped a robbery of a jewelry store in a strip mall and were waiting for the police to arrive when this very disheveled old man came up to us and began an intense, hate-filled tirade about how supers ruined his life. Basically, his story was that he joined the Metroville Police Department a few years into the ban and started out as a beat officer but rose up through the ranks and positions. Then the ban ended and he was let go a few years later. His life went downhill from there. He couldn't find another job, his wife and four kids left him, he lost his home and nearly all of his possessions, and was living on the streets ever since. We tried to calm him down, but it just made him rage even more. Luckily, for all of us, the police arrived at that moment and gently but firmly led him away. But, as I said, that conversation still stuck with me to this day.

I sympathized with the man greatly because, in a way, he was right about certain things. After supers were banned, crime rates predictably rose and police departments all over the country needed more personnel and resources to pick up the slack. Then, when supers were reinstated fifteen years later, the rates sharply dropped, which was great for most people, but that had an unforeseen consequence. Because there were fewer criminals on the streets, many of those departments could no longer afford to keep the same extra personnel and resources they accumulated over the length of the ban. And so, inevitably, massive budget cutbacks and layoffs occurred. It was no real secret that many of the anti-super people were former law enforcement officials. That was why I completely understood the man's position. I would probably be angry also if a lot of people who were banned for so long suddenly came back and I lost my job because of it.

There were also plenty of very strange moments that happened over the last four years, like fans of mine who were _**really**_ into cosplay, maybe a little but too much, or this extremely religious old woman who tried to throw holy water onto my face because she literally thought I was a spawn of Satan, but those tales could possibly fill a novel by themselves so I'll just leave them out.

Anyway, the point was that while I loved what I did week in and week out, I would be lying if I said that was all I wanted to deal with. There were many times I wished some supervillain could come back, people like Syndrome, the Underminer, the Screenslaver, the Atomizer, hell, even Randall Pine. Not that I wanted massive death and destruction, but it was for something else. It was strange to think about, even now, but that night inside the ATI facility, a place where I could had been easily killed a dozen times over, was also the time that I felt the most alive. It was the combination of all the armed guards and killing machines we faced, the race against time to save Metroville from certain destruction, and using my powers at their fullest that had my adrenaline levels peaked for hours, and I wanted to feel that type of rush again. I hoped, one day, something or someone would come along and make that happen again.

Right about the time I was halfway home, my cell phone that was in my pocket rang. I pulled it out and answered it. "Hello?"

" _Hey, Jess. It's Violet."_

"Violet!" I replied in a cheerful tone. "Haven't heard from you in a while. How are you?"

" _Fine. And you? How's college?"_

"Also fine. As for college? Depends on what day it is and how I feel on said day."

I heard her chuckle over the line. _"I hear that. I remember what college_ _was like and I imagine it's not that much different now. Anyway, the reason I'm calling is because my parents are cooking a late Thanksgiving dinne_ _r this coming Thursday._ _My brother Dash is coming up from Texas and it's possible Jack Jack will be there, too. It's the first time we'll be together as a family for quite some time and I know how much you want to meet all of us so, wanna come?"_

I was screaming internally with excitement as that was a long time dream come true, but I answered, "That sounds super awesome and I really want to go, but are you sure it's appropriate? I mean, this sounds like a family only thing and I don't want to impose."

" _Jess, I wouldn't have called to invite you if that was the case. Trust me, it'll be fine. They'll all be happy to meet you."_

I grinned widely. "Well, in that case, it's a date."

" _Perfect. I'll pick you up at your place at around three that day. Is that fine?"_

"Yeah, that'll work. Thanks so much, Vi. This...this...means so much to me." I was starting to get overwhelmed by that sudden invitation.

" _It's no problem at all. I have to go, so I'll see you then. Take care of yourself and don't work too hard."_

"Same to you, Vi."

I felt like I was floating on air the rest of the way home, without the use of my aura, I should add. A chance to meet the entire Incredibles family, a dream of mine ever since I first met Violet on that same night. And now…

Now would probably be a good time for a little catch-up on that part. Over the last four years, Violet and I were still great friends, but I didn't really see much of her, although we did keep in contact through calls and emails. While she no longer did super work, she was still the Director of Operations of Commercial Systems at ATI, which was still surprising to me considering what we learned about the company itself that night. As such, she was extremely busy with projects and travel most of the time, which was one of the reasons why I didn't see much of her.

The few times we were able to meet up, we tried to make those days fun and special. One day we spent an afternoon at the world class Metroville Zoo and Aquarium, followed up by dinner at a fancy restaurant. Another day we saw a triple feature at a great movie theater. There was also a day when she took me to a deserted area and taught me a few new tricks which improved my powers and martial arts, and those skills actually came in handy a few times since then.

However, the greatest thing by far happened over the summer when Violet invited me, along with Leon and Chance, as her personal guests for the maiden trip of the second _MagSpeed_ train. Yes, true to her word, she and her team at ATI rebuilt the train after the previous one met an untimely but spectacular end on its first and only run. Luckily, no problems happened that time and it was a very fun, if uneventful journey.

However, one extremely interesting thing did come up during the trip. At one point, Chance asked Violet if the _MagSpeed_ was an actual successor to an earlier train called the _MetroLev._ She confirmed that it was and that even though her train was obvious the more advanced, the two shared most of the same basic design concepts. Admittedly, I was only paying half attention at that point as I was enjoying the beautiful countryside speeding past the windows, at least until Violet explained how the _MetroLev_ also had a problem on its maiden trip and how her mother Elastigirl saved everyone on board as well as the many people at the end of the line from certain death. I was surprised that I'd never even heard of that before and my interest and curiosity was peaked, so much so that when I eventually returned home, the first thing I did was go on my computer and looked it up online. After reading the entire story, I was shocked that it had been all but forgotten, considering that it was probably the catalyst in turning public opinion around in favor of supers returning. It was possible that was because it had been overshadowed by the much larger and more important _Everjust_ incident that happened not long after, but still, I felt that was a story worth telling, especially to newer supers.

Lastly, to the pleasant surprise of some people, including myself, Violet had actually started dating again. It seemed like she was finally and completely moving on from the tragic death of her fiance Tony Rydinger years earlier and was looking forward. A couple of years ago, while attending a local business conference, she met a nice gentleman by the name of Samuel Stevens and they hit it off almost immediately. I could tell by the positive glow she now had that she clearly didn't have when we first met that her new relationship was working out really well. I was extremely happy for her and hoped it continued.

I arrived home and entered to find my parents sitting in the living room and watching some older movie on TV. For those who are new or have forgotten, my mom, Veronica, was also a highly popular super by the name of Electricia. Her powers, obviously, were electricity-based. She had been doing super work for twenty-three years but I didn't know any of it until four years ago, at the same time the events at ATI happened. She still did work but not as much as she used to, almost solely due to the fact that she was getting older. My dad, Stephen, was not a super himself, but he was the chief operations officer at ATI. He was also involved that night, but he had been a captive. It was actually because of those events that he reached his current position in the company. Although he wasn't a super, he did try to help out in some ways. Sometimes when Mom and I patrolled together, he would drive us to and from locations. He would also listen to police scanners and guide us to the troubled areas. In short, I had really cool parents, most of the time, anyway.

"Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad," I greeted.

"Hi, honey," Mom greeted. "Did you have fun?"

"I did," I said with a sigh, "until Leon beat me in a two-out-of-three match in Ultimate Super Melee 3."

"Aw, that's too bad," Dad said. "You'll get him next time."

"Oh, I have no doubt of that," I agreed.

Mom just sighed and shook her head. "I'll never understand the appeal of these fighting video games, especially ones that have supers facing off against each other."

"Hey, it's fun," I protested. "Besides, super versus super debates and stuff have been going on since the beginning."

"Believe me, I know," she said. "Even today, people still ask me, _'So who's more powerful, you or He-Lectrix?'_ There's rarely any talk about complementing each other. It always has to be competition."

"Come on, hon," Dad said, putting his arm around her. "People have been compared against other people forever. You should just take it in stride. Besides, everyone knows you're far more powerful than him."

"Better believe it," she said with a smile and then gave him a kiss.

"You should know, Mom," I said, "that in online forums the two of us are being compared against each other also. _'Electricia vs. Phoenicia. The ultimate mother-daughter squabble_. _Who_ _would win?'_ "

"Really? Seriously?" Mom looked exasperated. "Mother against daughter? Don't these people have anything better to do?"

"Obviously not," I replied. "Still though, you have to admit it's an interesting question."

"She's right," Dad joined in. "It _is_ a good question."

"Don't start, either of you," Mom grumbled.

"So what are you two watching?" I asked to change the subject.

"Just some old drama," Dad answered. "Want to watch it with us?"

"No thanks," I replied.

"Of course not," he said jokingly. "You young-uns all love the modern stuff, just flashy effects and noise with hardly enough room to fit a story in there somewhere."

"Perhaps, but maybe in twenty years when I'm your age and I have kids of my own, I'll be saying exactly the same thing to them."

Dad reached over to the nearby end table and grabbed an envelope. "Anyway, speaking of entertainment, this came for you."

I took the envelope and read the words on it. MEDTech Services. It was the front company for the National Supers Agency's Media and Entertainment Division. Remember when I was talking about the massive rise of super stardom? Well, it had gotten so big that the NSA had to create an entirely new department just to handle that. To receive a letter from them meant that someone was personally requesting your services for entertainment purposes, anything from attending a child's birthday party to a major Hollywood studio wanting you for a movie part. It wasn't the first letter I'd received from them and I doubt it'd be the last.

I tore open the envelope and pulled out the handwritten letter. " _ **'Dear Phoenicia,'**_ " I read the letter out loud. " _ **'**_ _ **We're writing to you in the hopes of hiring you to attend our twin daughters Casey and Stacey's 10**_ _ **th**_ _ **birthday party on December 14**_ _ **th**_ _ **. You're their favorite super and one of their wishes is to see you in person.**_ _ **You're such an inspirational role model, to them and to many girls everywhere.**_ _ **We know how busy you are and we'll completely understand if you're unable to attend, but it will truly make their day to see you fly in and entertain them. Phone number and address are enclosed. Please contact us in advance either way.**_ _ **Thanks for reading this letter and w**_ _ **e hope to see you here.**_ _ **Sincerely,**_ _ **Cheryl and Kevin Robertson.'**_ "

"Aw, that's really sweet," Mom gushed. "So are you going to attend their party?"

"You know I always try to make it to these parties if I can," I replied. "You just don't know these days, though."

That was true. That was my sixteenth invite for birthday parties. I had been able to make eleven of the previous fifteen. As for the four that I couldn't, one was because I had been really sick, two were because I had important tests, and the last was because a bank robbery happened while I was on my way there. I felt really bad when those happened so I always tried to make it up to them somehow. Two of them I'd sent autographed posters and a letter, another one I'd called, and the last one her parents and I surprised her at her school. For the ones that I did make it to, I loved to entertain everyone with spectacular but safe power tricks. For example, a favorite of mine was to snap my fingers to pretend I was lighting the tip of my index finger on fire, use it to light the candles of the birthday cake and then pretend to blow my finger out. Also, just simply floating in the air was more than enough of a thrill for them because they loved the ghostly flames which surrounded my body and the way my hair billowed around my head like I was underwater. Just seeing the smiles on those children's faces made me feel the same way that I did when I saw the faces of the people I helped and made me all the more glad that I chose to go down that path.

"On that line of attending things, Violet called me and invited me to dinner at her parents' place on Thursday," I told my parents. "Apparently her entire family will be there this time so it's a chance for me to finally meet them all."

"Oh, wow, that's great, honey," Mom said. "It's so nice of her to do these things for you."

"I agree," Dad said. "She's become quite the friend."

"Very true," I agreed with them.

"I hope you have fun," Mom said.

"Hey, when you do go, can you try to get Elastgirl's autograph?" Dad requested. Mom gave him a look. "What? Can I get an autograph from someone I admired as a kid? Not that way, of course." Mom just smirked and rolled her eyes.

"Anyway, I'm going to my room," I said. "Enjoy your movie."

I headed upstairs to my room, but right when I opened my door, I heard Dad call to me, "So what were the results of that poll between you and your mother?"

"Me, two-to-one!" I yelled back and I swore I heard Mom gasp in disbelief as I entered my room and closed the door behind me.

I had not taken two steps forward when my cell phone rang again. "Hello?" I answered.

" _Hi, it's Kyra."_

"Oh, hey there. How are you doing? Ready for that trip of yours?"

" _Yep._ _Hubby and I are_ _packed and will be leaving tonight._ _My_ _cousin_ _Nika will be watching over the kids, but feel free to come over if you want. Nathan especially_ _would like you over_ _as I just bought him Ultimate Super Melee 3_ _and he really wants to play it with you. I think_ _he'_ _s getting tired of me always beating him at it."_

"Huh. Never knew you were that much into gaming."

" _I've told you several times how I used to burn up a fortune in quarters every weekend at the arcades when I was a teen."_

"Yeah, you did. I guess I'm just surprised you play and like a game like that. Mom can't understand fighting games at all."

Kyra chuckled. _"Yeah, that's Veronica, all right. She's becoming too much of an old lady."_

I laughed. "Old? Kyra, you're almost four years younger than she is. I get your point, though. Mom's great and all, but I wish she could lighten up a little sometimes."

" _Hey, I have an idea. Maybe we both should challenge her to a game."_

"Ooh, devious. I'm in. Anyway, kinda weird talking about it as I just came back from playing it with Leon. The jerk beat me in a two-out-of-three matchup."

" _Ouch. Well, don't sweat it too much. You'll get him next time."_

"You know, my dad said almost the exact thing, and I have no doubt of that."

" _Well anyway, I just called to let you know we're leaving. Brian and I have to get to the airport."_

"Okay then. Have a nice flight and enjoy your vacation." I then sighed. "Wish I could go to the Bahamas."

" _You'll go one day. Maybe we'll go together."_

"I'd like that. See you around Christmas."

" _See you then, Jess. Bye"_

"Bye."

The call ended and I sat down on my bed. To explain, Kyra and her husband Brian were going on a nearly three-week-long vacation, first going to her native Arizona to spend a couple of days with her relatives there, and then flying to the Bahamas for a second honeymoon before returning home on Christmas day. It was something that they wanted to do for a while but never had the time. But now, with a lot of free time, their children growing up, and the fact that it would soon be a new year, century, and millennium all at once, they figured there would never be a more perfect time.

I suppose while I'm explaining things, I should go much further. Kyra Wolverton was one of my closest friends, even if she was almost twice my age. Together with her husband, they owned a small but growing chain of restaurants around Metroville that made them pretty well off. However, as you'd obviously guessed, she also had a secret life. She's the super formally known as Blazestone. Her powers were fire-based, like mine, but were more of the pyrokinetic variety, which meant she controlled fire with her mind. Because of the possible danger of accidentally setting anything or anyone on fire, she wore specialized sunglasses which blocked that ability anytime she was out as her regular self. She first came to the scene only a couple of years after my mom did under almost the exact same circumstances. Just simply walking down a street, saw a jewelry store being robbed, but instead of taking the five robbers head-on like Mom did with hers, she hid just out of sight and used her powers to create a massive wall of fire just outside the building which trapped them inside until the police came.

That was the start of a decade-long career with plenty of highlights, from saving people and rescuing hostages to fighting robbers and gangs and even helping out against the Atomizer. However, she officially retired from the super business in 1990, not long after the birth of her third child, to completely focus on raising her children. Even with that, she still wanted to be involved in some way, and so the NSA hired her to be an instructor at their Superhero Tactical Readiness and Preparation facility, otherwise known as STRAP, or just simply Super School.

That was where Kyra and I first met as she had been assigned, or more like she requested, to be my instructor. For six months, she taught me everything on what it meant to be a super, from learning the history of supers to martial arts to how to use my powers more effectively. Our friendship started almost right from the beginning and grew from there to the point that even after I graduated from the program, we still continued to meet up to train and spar, as well as just simply going out to places and enjoying ourselves.

In our four years of friendship, I found out a couple of interesting things about Kyra. For one, I was very surprised to learn that she was actually the second super to use the name Blazestone. The first, also a female super, was one of the many who died by Syndrome's Omnidroids on Nomanisan Island. It really wasn't uncommon at all for supers to take the names of previous ones if they died or retired. There were obviously exceptions, of course, the main one being if the name had been retired for famous or infamous reasons. Before anyone asked, no, the two Blazestones were not related in any way to each other and they never even met. The only similarity to each other were their pyrokinetic powers.

The other thing was that she's an unbelievably talented singer. I was talking professional, Grammy-winning level. She already had a nice sounding voice, so I really shouldn't had been all that surprised by that at all. But the first night that I heard her sing at a local karaoke club that she took me to, I had been so mesmerized that the very first question I asked her afterward was why the hell wasn't she with a major music studio making millions with that beautiful and powerful singing voice. She simply said that she didn't want to and was perfectly happy with her life as it was. That was fair. She had already been popular enough as Blazestone and people still missed her nearly a decade after her retirement.

I got up from the bed and went over to my computer desk. I then reached out and took one of the pictures that was sitting on it. It was the newest one there, having been taken just that past summer. It was of me and Kyra standing on top of a mesa in a remote part of Arizona, arms around each other's shoulders and smiling brightly at the camera. She took me on a trip there as a high school graduation gift. She even showed me the small town, and the house, where she spent part of her childhood. That had been a very fun and very informative trip, with a lot of great memories. My thumb lightly moved across the picture, and a smile formed on my lips. I was feeling something right then, but wasn't quite sure what it was.

Before I could think more on it, my watch buzzed and vibrated and a message flashed across the digital surface, which indicated that I had an incoming private call. I put the picture back and left my room. I went downstairs to the first floor and then continued down into the basement. I headed for the deepest part, where it didn't look any different from the rest of the basement, but that was the point. With a few special twists of the watch's face, a hidden door opened up, revealing the room where Mom and I kept our super suits, as well as magazines, newspaper articles, and even videos of news programs which told of our exploits. There was also an area which displayed the wrecked and mangled suits of my grandparents, Magman and Starfury. Unfortunately, they had also been nothing more than test subjects for the Omnidroids as well.

At the main computer terminal, I placed my right hand on the scanner and a blue laser beam read the retinas of my eyes. _"_ _Wells, Jessica M.,"_ it said in a feminine voice. _"_ _Identity confirmed."_

"Accept incoming call," I instructed.

" _Very well. Standby."_

The screen turned on to reveal Leon and Chance standing in their own super room at their house. If they were contacting me this way, then that meant they wanted to discuss secret plans. As a general rule, we never discussed anything super related unless it was in a super room, where our calls to each other were scrambled and highly encrypted.

"Are we still on for tonight?" I asked.

" _Yes,"_ Leon replied. _"As far as we know, nothing's changed, so we're still a go."_

"Gotcha. Do you want us to just meet at the location or travel together?"

" _We can just meet at the location. Remember to be there by six."_

"Understood. See you there."

" _See you."_

The screen went dark and I turned to see Mom standing by the door. I gave her a simple nod which she returned. It was shaping up to be an interesting night.

However, what we didn't know then, but would later on, was that that night was also going to be the start of truly unimaginable events, and that, quite soon afterward, I, my friends, and others were going to find ourselves caught up in the very middle of it.


	3. The Hunt Begins

_**Author's note: This chapter took much longer to write than expected, mainly due to several full changes and revisions. Thanks for your patience, and have a happy Christmas and New Year. Also, to the guest reviewer who asked what POV meant, it stands for point-of-view. Thanks.**_

 **Chapter 2**

 **Cabin Hideout**

 **5:51 p.m.**

 _ **Villain's POV**_

It was an absolutely perfect night.

Clear skies, a light cool breeze, plenty of bright stars. Probably didn't mean all that much to many people, but when you're a person who hadn't even seen a night sky in over ten years, it might as well had been seeing heaven itself. Add the fresh smell of earth and woods, I could just close my eyes and suddenly I'm a happy little kid again, camping in those hills with my family. The only thing missing was a campfire, smores, and crappy yet entertaining stories. Ah, if only to be that young again, innocent, isolated, ignorant…

But then you grow up and quickly learn just how truly shitty the world really was. Just about nothing but anguish, suffering, and misery anywhere you looked. Oh, sure, there were maybe a few bright spots here and there, but you don't hear about those too much, or for too long. Even those tiny sparks are usually drowned out by a massive wave of negativity and misery quite quick. Pessimistic much, one might ask? Not really. Take a look at front page headlines on a newspaper or the first ten to fifteen minutes of news programs. About ninety to ninety-five percent of the time, they always start off with a negative headline. Well, bad news sells, people say, which, I can't lie, was true. But, at least for me, it was more than that.

See, it was one night, a couple of years before "The Night", after stopping yet another bank robbery, but not before the asshole put a few slugs into an unfortunate teller's face just cause, that I came to a realization and, supposedly, broke a cardinal rule for supers. I thought, and then asked, _**'**_ _ **What was the point?'**_ Seriously, what _**WAS**_ it? What I meant was, from the very beginning, criminals committed crimes, supers went out and stopped them, criminals went to jail, supers went home, and then did it all over again the next day. It had been the same song and dance for decades, minus the obvious fifteen-year-long vacation. And, of course, people loved to spout off the statistics: _**'**_ _ **CRIME RATES AT HISTORICAL LOWS!' 'CITIES HAVE NEVER BEEN SAFER!'**_

Okay, fine. If people wanted to go by stats, then yeah, that's true. However, what they forgot, or conveniently left out, was the little fact that _**crime never stopped.**_ Yeah, even with the fact that there were more supers out there than ever, or that there were super-powered people out there to began with, that hadn't at all deterred people from wanting to commit crimes. Hell, there were many cases where people committed crimes specifically to draw out supers and try to kill them. A particular saying was very true: _**'**_ _ **Few things can overcome human greed.'**_

So crimes were still happening, but you're a super, people might say. Or at least I used to be. Wasn't it our job to stop them? Okay, first off, who said? Where was it written in natural or human law that stated a super's only reason for existing was to fight criminals? As far as I knew, I didn't see that anywhere. And no, neither the International Superhero Accord or the National Superhero Reinstatement Act counted. Both of those only revoked the ban and granted supers permission to return to action, _**if they chose to.**_ Those last four words were the key ones, but apparently in a lot of stupid people's empty heads, 'permission' was obviously another word for 'drafted'. They figured it was like mandatory service: You _**had**_ to join the fight against crime, you _**had no**_ choice in the matter. You'd had thought that after decades saying otherwise, that supers fighting crime was _**ENTIRELY**_ voluntary, that not every person who developed powers did so, ever, but hey, let's not let that tiny bit of fact blow up a mountain of ignorance.

As part of the ''tweener' crowd, that was, supers who had been born during the ban, most of us grew up hearing what our parents had done, and it was no different with me. My own parents were among a tiny handful of supers who operated in the country where we were originally from. Then the ban happened, things went to crap real fast, and when I was a toddler, Dad decided to move us to America to start our lives over. For a while, it all worked out. Dad opened a car repair shop, Mom had a cafe, and things were looking up. Still, their one true love had always been when they were active supers, and they never stopped telling me and my three other siblings about all the things they had done back then. You could just tell by how their eyes and faces lit up with every story just how much they loved doing that and how they wanted to do it again one day. So it was a shame that neither them or my other siblings lived long enough to see the ban lifted.

When that day came just a few years later, like many supers of my generation, I joined the fight. Part of it was obviously because I volunteered to. I mean, how could I not? After listening to my parents' stories as well as others for years, I finally had the chance to show off what I could do, to make my own mark upon the world. The other part, however, was due to what I felt was obligation. As the rest of my family was dead, I alone was left to continue their legacy, to bring that same passion and sense of honor and justice they had all those years ago to my adopted home country, to Metroville. For most of my dozen years of service, I did all of that and more. I truly and honestly felt like I was doing my part in making a difference and honoring my late parents. But like many things, the longer you did something, the greater chance that your beliefs and viewpoints could begin to change, and, for me, it was within the last three years when that started happening, but not in the way you'd think.

And that led into my second point, and that was supers had a lot less freedom when engaging with criminals and villains than you'd thought possible. Yeah, kinda strange to hear, but it was no lie. When fighting or just being out in public, we supers were neutered to all hell on what we could or could not do. Before I go on, let me make it very clear that I completely understood what was going on. See, it was like this, when the ban was lifted, the higher ups were, let's just say, a little skittish on the thought of that happening again. So, to head that possibility off, they laid down a few ground rules. And by a few ground rules, I really meant they put every super on probation. Okay, probation was maybe a bit much, but the fact was that, for a while, the NSA really laid the law down on how we supers did things. Now, of course, there had always been restrictions since the very beginning. Ever wondered why we couldn't just take down greedy CEOs who stole wages from their employees and deposited it all in a bank in Switzerland? Or why we couldn't go into another country and punch out an evil dictator who was always mouthing off about nuking the world? That was why. Yeah, that never made much sense, but that was how it was.

And now I'll finally get to what all of that was leading up to. I firmly and truly believed that our perpetual fight against crime and the greater restrictions we were under was what eventually led up to "The Night" and my downfall. Here's how it went. In the years following the ban, it seemed like most supers were very happy just being back out on the streets to question the new rules, if they even thought about them at all. I didn't blame them as I was the same way, at first. However, unlike most of the rest, it didn't take long for me to see what was really happening. The new rules were more than just a pain in the ass, they actually proved to be a massive hindrance. Even worse, criminals quickly picked up on that and took advantage, and situations that could had ended in minutes instead took much longer.

So, with that deck stacked against us, you'd think supers everywhere would be up in arms about that, right? _**BUZZ!**_ No, of course not. Like I said, supers were just happy being back out again and that was more than enough for them, but it wasn't even close for me as I didn't like being held back on a virtual leash. So I made my voice and point very loud and clear on that, and everyone else wasted no time...not giving a damn. Alright, not technically true. There were others who felt the same way I did, but, in short, the general rule going around then was _**'**_ _ **Don't rock the boat'.**_ There were too many people in powerful positions who were just looking for an excuse, any excuse, to reinstate the basically we just had to suck it up and let our actions be our words, or so I was once told by someone. And so I did and stayed quiet for the next nine years.

And then came that night at the bank. Now, the fact that this total waste of cells and oxygen just offed the poor woman for no reason was bad enough. What really put it over the top was that I instantly recognized the guy. He was someone who I busted for a carjacking during my first year as a super. In fact, he had been released from prison just three days earlier for that same crime. One would think that after nearly nine years in the clink, a person wouldn't be in much of a hurry to book a room there again, but nope, not with this guy. Even with the two second takedown I did to him, he still had that smirk and cocky attitude from when we first met.

Now, to this day, I don't know if it was all the frustration that I felt over the years which finally peaked, that stupid smirk on his face, just having a crappy day, or all of the above, but I came within a half-second of ending his worthless life right then and there. It would had been so easy, too. My hand was already on his throat from the takedown, and with my strength, all I had to do was give a little squeeze and every bone in his neck would become instant powder. I was completely justified in doing it, too. Once a criminal took a life, then all bets were off.

Somehow, I was just able to stop myself from killing him, which was too bad. Would've saved taxpayers a lot of money. Instead, I grabbed the back of his head and slammed his face against a nearby desk. Then, I dragged him out of the bank by the collar of his shirt, after which I flung him through the air and he made a not-so-gentle landing at the feet of the numerous waiting cops. He ended up with a two-week-long stay in the hospital with a concussion, shattered nose, and a mouthful of broken teeth from the desk, and a broken arm, two ribs and an ankle from the short flight. But, hey, I didn't kill him, although he had screamed to everyone that I tried to. Really? Well, at least he lost that smirk.

Now here's where things got a little interesting. As you'd expect, that little episode got some press behind it. Obviously, the local anti-super pundits had a field day, calling it the most blatant example of over-the-top super violence against a normal in years, regardless of what the latter had done. The NSA expressed 'concern' but nothing more than that. Most people and other supers actually sided with me. As for me, if it had been just another criminal, then I almost certainly would had been apathetic about the whole thing. But because I knew him, that was the moment when my viewpoint about what we did as supers started to change.

So, did that mean I started going around and smashing criminals' faces in? No. I wasn't that bloodthirsty. I mean, I had a reputation of being rougher and tougher with criminals than most other supers even before the bank and even more so after, but I wasn't going to literally rip them limb from limb, unless they gave me a reason to. But, no, my change in viewpoint started when I began noticing more and more criminals back out on the streets not long after being put away, sometimes literally within a few hours. It wasn't just for petty little things like loitering or jaywalking, either, but more like aggravated battery and attempted murder. That led me to two conclusions: either the police were just that massively incompetent, or many of them, and others, were on the take.

That was the very moment when I thought and then asked, _**'**_ _ **What was the point?'**_ I mean, when it seemed like more and more people were ganging up on you and stopping you from doing your job effectively, then how could you not start questioning things. Add in the unbelievable apathy from most other supers and the day quickly came when I just threw my hands up and walked away to take a break from the bullshit that was modern day crimefighting.

Believe me, that was the last thing I wanted to do. Despite all the crap that was going on, I still loved what I did and wanted to continue building upon the legacy my parents started. But at that moment, it was impossible, and not just due to outside forces, either. Admittedly, there had been some internal ones as well, and had been for well over a decade, back before the ban was lifted. If I could put a word to it, I would say that I was 'unbalanced'.

Okay, I'm about to get a little philosophical here to better describe that. When I was little, my mom taught me that every person had a balance point. No, not the walking on tightrope kind. She told me that people had four true needs: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. How much of each obviously varied from person to person, but the spot where they equaled out was considered the balance point of our very well-being. If any of them was negatively affected, then your entire well-being could be thrown out-of-whack and you would suffer both internally and externally. In short, you'd become unbalanced, and would be until you identified the problem and fixed it. I knew my own problem, but the fix had to come from elsewhere.

And so I went home, and by that, I meant that I returned to my original home country, and stayed there for over a year. I still had relatives there who went completely out of their way to be as helpful as possible. They provided a large part of the help I needed, but I needed more that just that if I wanted to truly fix myself. For that, I traveled around the country and offered help to those who needed it, but only as my normal self. It was actually quite refreshing and eye-opening, considering my ever growing disillusionment of super life.

However, there was another reason why I traveled around my birth nation, or even why I returned there to begin with. I wanted to learn the full story of my parents' heroics in that part of the world, especially the parts they never told me or my siblings. Prior to that point of time, it had been nearly thirty years since their forced retirement and just over fourteen years since their deaths. I knew there were stories out there that needed to be told and heard, and even though they weren't around anymore, they could still had been some help in turning me into the super I was sure they wanted me to be.

Posing as a historical researcher as I obviously couldn't blurt out who I really was, I spent eight months traveling around, going from small towns to large cities to learn as much about my parents as I could, and I learned plenty. For starters, how much I heard and was told depended on what part of the country I was in. Some areas barely heard of them, if at all, and other areas still celebrated their heroics after three decades. Neither was unusual. Like I said, very few supers worked out of there back then, and they were only two out of less than a dozen for the entire region. But they had been the top two out of those less than a dozen supers, so they were more fondly remembered than the others.

To be truthful, I didn't really learn much more than what my parents had already told me long ago, but it was still nice to get the local perspective on them. Also, there was still more than enough new info out there that gave a more complete picture. Combined with the help from my relatives and my own offers of simple help and I felt I was well on the way to making myself whole again.

But, of course, shit happens and life always had that funny idea of finding a way of stopping you from accomplishing the most important thing you were trying to do. Never failed, didn't it. Anyway, my two best friends managed to track me down and came there to convince me to come back. They told me something big was going down back in Metroville and they wanted me, and my skills, to help them put a stop to it. I told them why I was there and that I wasn't ready to leave yet, but they insisted, and they persisted. It quickly reached the point where I became split. Half of me came within a hair of outright accusing both of them of being truly selfish, that they came all the way there not because they missed me, but because they only wanted my powers and abilities to get them through what they seemingly couldn't do by themselves. On the flip side, the three of us had made a pact that we'd always have each other's backs, no matter what. Over the last decade, we'd made good on that pact dozens of times. In short, I owed them quite a few favors, even if it wasn't the best time right then. So we compromised and I would go back with them and help them out, but then return to my native country to finish my healing process without any more interruptions, which I figured would take at least another year. And so, with that, the three of us went back to America, to Metroville.

And I'm sure you'd guessed what happened after that. Yep, "The Night" happened just three days after I came back. In the aftermath, five people died, and everything I said before made that happen. The NSA's restrictive rules made finding other options impossible, the other supers' reluctance in even bothering to look for other options, and my reputation of being very outspoken against the rules, even being called dangerous and reckless when I was anything but, all of that led to the fingers being pointed solely at me, blaming me for the entire thing, and being convicted of five counts of involuntary manslaughter and permanently stripped of all superhero privileges and responsibilities.

Now, I had to be honest. If that was all that had happened, then thing may had been a little different. I would still had been furious about the whole thing, but the most possible scenario out of that was that I'd quietly serve my ten years in prison, got out, and then disappear somewhere into the world, never to be seen again. Probably would had been a much happier life.

But what truly changed everything was that those two friends, one of whom I'd been with since kindergarten, the ones who had always been so loyal and dependable and had always been there for me, the ones who actually flew to my native country to sweet talk me into coming back because they needed my help, and one of them who I…, they completely turned their backs on me and sided with everyone else, not even bothering to tell the full story of what truly happened. So much for always having my back, no matter what.

So, yeah, I was still more than enraged by the whole thing, but there were other feelings I felt that night: terrible sadness, crushing hurt, and unimaginable betrayal. Not only that, I felt like another, much larger part of my well-being had been ripped out of me, and that was my honor. Even with my overall feelings of being a super those days, I still had a massive sense of honor. It was why I didn't kill every crook and criminal I came across, although I had every right to with at least a few of them. It was why I took every vow and promise I made to others extremely seriously, like having the backs of others when they needed it. And now that was gone. For months, perhaps even years, I wanted, and tried, to get back that missing piece of myself, and then, after one night, I lost another massive part and became even more unbalanced. It was possible, maybe even certain, that I'd never be completely whole again.

However, even more changes came during my decade long stay at UMAX. Starting from my earliest days there, that gaping void in my psyche began to be filled with two other emotions: bitterness and hate. Some of that was directed at others, but nearly all of it was focused on those five traitorous sons of bitches, and especially at the two of them who I once considered to be incredibly close friends. I made no attempt to stem those feelings, and they only grew more powerful and intense over the years, so much so that they overwhelmed my well-being and completely took over my entire psyche. When I got out, ice cold bitterness and burning hot hatred was all I felt. I was probably no longer capable of feeling much else. If there was any chance of getting at least a part of me back, then I knew what I had to do.

So, there it was, a little bit of backstory which led up to that point. Or perhaps it was just me venting. Maybe it was both. Anyway, even though I had info on all five targets, I didn't immediately make a move against them, not yet, anyway. The day after I got out of prison, I scouted the homes of three of them from a distance, in disguise, and for a minute at max. Not much had really changed in ten years. As for the two that I didn't scout, one was because it was pointless and the other was for...reasons.

The next two days were totally dedicated to me spending time out on the town. I went out to see three different movies, ate out at two restaurants, was able to get into a local concert at the last minute, and just spent time at a secluded spot and looking out at the ocean for several hours. I did all that because I knew that once I got started with my plans, I'd never be able to do any of that ever again. My life at that point would go down three possible paths: I'd be on the run for the rest of my life, I'd be imprisoned for the rest of my life, or I'd be dead. So it was nice to enjoy those simple pleasures of life while I could.

The final thing I did was make a visit to a very special place for possibly the final time. Ocean Point Cemetery. That was where my family, my mom, my dad, two brothers, and two sisters were buried. A large polished granite headstone with our surname in large, stately letters marked the spot. When the light was right, not only did it shine brightly, but it seemed to slightly change color. That day, in the late afternoon sun, it was doing just that, maybe even more so than ever. It was maybe coincidence, but it could had been a sign. I never really ruled those things out in certain situations.

I approached the gravestone and did a quick look around to see if I was alone. Confirming that I was, I removed the hood of my dark leather jacket from my head, followed by my equally dark ball cap and sunglasses. I then just stood there quiet and motionless for a minute before I began talking.

"Hey there," I said. "It's good to see you guys again. I know it's been over ten years and I promised to visit you on every anniversary, but you know how it is when you've been in prison for all that time. They don't let you out very much during your stay there."

I forced a small grim smile before I sighed. "I never should've gone there, or if I really had to, then five other supers should've been sharing cells with me. I know what happened. They know what happened. I'm sure you all know what happened. But no one else does. I'm still the only one being blamed for it. They got to live on as though nothing happened and without punishment or consequences. That has to change. That _will_ change."

I then turned my attention to my mom's engraving on the stone. "Mom, I still remember what you told me all those years ago when I was little." I then repeated her words at the same time I saw the exact same scene play out inside my mind, " _ **'The world of supers is not strictly black and white. There's a lot of gray mixed in. When your father and I were active supers, there were a few times when we were forced to do things that some would call unsavory and unethical, but still**_ _ **done for the greater good. As long as your overall actions can prove that in the end, you can still be considered an honorable person.'**_ "

Another sigh. "I know you know what I'm planning to do, and I know you know why. It clearly can be considered unsavory and unethical. It's something I don't have to do, but I need to do, for the greater good. Ifeel like it's the only way any kind of justice can be served now. Maybe I'll even get back some of my honor. We'll see what happens."

I stood there for a while once again, just reminiscing about certain things before saying, "Well, it's time for me to go. It's about to begin. How this will all end, I don't know. Whatever happens, it's nice seeing and talking to you all."

I reached into my jacket's inner pocket and pulled out a flower. It was of a special kind, a _Rhyncholaelia_ _digbyana._ I placed the flower into the provided vase, and then put both my hands on the gravestone and bowed my head _._ After a minute, I stepped back from the grave and put back on my hat, hood, and sunglasses.

"See you soon," I whispered, and then turned around and walked away, possibly for the last time.

Nearly three hours later, I was laying on my back on the roof of my cozy cabin hideout, staring up at the night sky and enjoying the view. That wasn't all I was enjoying. I bought a portable Walkman radio the day before, and I was using it to listen to the biggest college football game going on in the area. My alma mater, Metro Tech University, was playing our immensely despised regional rival Municiberg College. Back when I was still in college, our football team, well, let me just say it, our football team sucked hard. It had been nothing more than a practice squad for other teams to beat up on. Apparently, though, while I was in prison, they decided to find a pulse and get good. That night, they had a chance to win their first conference championship in fifty years, but only if they got past the MC, whom they hadn't beaten in over twenty years. So far, they had a real chance of doing both.

Like I said, it was a perfect night.

I wasn't able to enjoy it for long, though. Just after halftime had ended, my watch started buzzing. I took a look at it and my mood and thoughts instantly changed.

It was time.

I turned off the Walkman, stood up, and then jumped off the roof, making a perfect landing on my feet. I entered the cabin, shut the door behind me, and then immediately glanced over to my right at the lone chair in the room. Sitting on it was specialized clothing and gear, made specifically for what I was about to do, if I still wanted to do it. That moment was my fork-in-the-road time. There was still time to back out if I wanted to or needed to. I could forget about it and really could just disappear into the ass end of nowhere. But if I left back out the front door within the next fifteen minutes, I was committed to the plan. There would be no going back.

It took only a few moments for me to say, _"Alea iacta est."_

I stripped out of my current clothes and then mostly dressed in the special ones. The outfit consisted of form fitting coveralls, boots, gloves, and a full head mask. All of it was matte black and made out of unique fibers. I moved around for a few moments to get a feel of them. They felt nice and seemed to have a lot of mobility. I hoped they were up to the task.

I then went into the bathroom, where I turned on the sink, put my hands under the water, and then splashed some on my face. I then took a long look at my face in the mirror. It certainly hardened up over the last ten years, and my eyes...they just stared blankly back at me, cold and dead, far from the fire and life they used to have. Even if I succeeded, some things within me might never come back.

With that, I put on the gloves and then the mask. I then walked out to the living room, took the backpack which contained the special gear, and put it on. I turned around and stood in front of the door, just staring at it for about a minute. It really did feel like a portal between live. I closed my eyes and took a few breaths.

" _ **DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!"**_

"I understand," I said to myself. "I understand what I need to do, and soon, Mickey, you'll understand, too."

I opened my eyes, reached for the handle, and opened the door. I stepped out, shut the door behind me, and then looked out at the main path and the dark woods. I gripped the straps of my backpack, and then took off running down the path, at about forty miles an hour. I could've gone much faster than that, but didn't want to risk it moving through the thick woods at night.

Super speed, yep, that was included in the package along with my super strength and healing. You could also add in the options of enhanced vision, hearing, smell, and some brain functions to that. In short, my powers were greatly enhanced physical abilities and senses. They were what made me such a scary and formidable super out on the streets back then, and I would have to completely rely on them in the days ahead.

I continued running at super speed through the woods. The hunt was beginning, and it was the perfect night for it.

 _ **P.S. "Alea iacta est" is Latin for "The die is cast". It's a saying for the point of no return.**_


	4. First Strike Part One

_**Author's note: Happy 2019 everyone. Hope your year goes well.**_

 **Chapter 3**

 _ **Westville Regional Megamall**_

 _ **6:05 p.m.**_

 _ **Jessica's POV:**_

Westville Regional Megamall.

That place was where it all started. One day four years ago, I went there along with my best friend Allison Kim to have an afternoon of fun. At the same time, Leon and Chance also happened to be there, and despite them saying otherwise, I still believed they followed me out there because, at that time, they suspected that my dad was caught up in the situation at ATI or even a willing part of it. I remembered how immensely annoyed I was at the time, but nowadays it was mainly used as a running joke between us.

Anyway, not even a few minutes would pass before four men with ATI weapons and gear burst in through the mall's food court skylight and started shooting. While we initially thought they were just robbers, we later learned they were sent there by Randy Pine himself to test that equipment, presumably so he could sell many more to other people and groups around the world. Nothing like becoming an arms dealer and using the destruction of Metroville as the sales pitch, I suppose.

So Leon and Chance decided to fight them while I originally declined and even tried to escape the mall. I had my reasons and still stood by them. Back then I was still going through my self-enforced ban on using my powers as I felt they were too dangerous. Of course, I didn't get very far before I had a change of heart and went back to help them. That was the first time that I'd willingly used my powers against another person, and I reacted afterwards by lashing out at Leon about it. Yeah, it was a little stupid as it wasn't his fault and it was all me on that part, but I guess I was just so upset and frustrated I needed someone to vent to and he just happened to had been the closest person. It also didn't help when Mom came to the scene as Electricia, especially when I didn't even know who she really was until that moment. Can you say, awkward?

Looking back on that, I surprisingly found the whole thing somewhat amusing. Not the actual incident, mind you, but my reaction to it. Of course, if that happened these days, I would had been there right beside them from the very beginning, maybe even leading the way. Also, after nearly four years of experience, I thought of at least a half dozen ways I could had ended it in seconds. It was certainly thinking in hindsight and I wouldn't change a thing if I had a do over as I felt it was a key moment to how I got to where I was now.

Despite that moment, we still came to the mall lots of times. It's numerous stores and outlets offered some of the best deals around for practically anything you wanted. When armed mercenaries weren't making a crashing entrance through its skylight, the food court offered a very wide variety of food to satisfy anyone's appetite. Lastly, the largest multiplex theater in the region had opened up there a year earlier. Basically, you could plan an entire afternoon, if not day, just moving around the Westville Regional Megamall.

That evening, Leon, Change, Mom, and I were there, but that time it wasn't for shopping or pleasure. We were there under official super business. A few days earlier, the NSA received an anonymous tip that a group of gang members from Municiberg were planning to do a quick swarm robbery of the mall parking lot around that time and requested us to look into it. Personal requests by the NSA to act on crime tips weren't uncommon, but it wasn't like we got them often, either. The NSA received many thousands of tips a year, but only deemed a tiny handful of those credible enough to send them out to supers. According to Chance, who was the tech expert among our small group, the NSA routed those calls through a computer system that had an algorithm which could determine whether the tips were genuine or not. I had no idea if that was true or not, but whatever they did worked out pretty well. Three times before we got tips from the NSA, and all three times they were right on the money. So we were more than confident they'd be right a fourth time also.

The four of us were staked out at different areas of the mall's massive parking lots. Leon and Chance respectively took up posts near the north and south entrances, while Mom kept watch close to the east entrance. I was perched on top of a department store and had the job of covering the entire lot as I was the fastest and could get to any trouble spot quickly. We were all ready and set to go into action when the time came. Now all we had to do was wait.

I slowly sighed to myself. Wait. Waiting was definitely the hardest part of the job. You almost literally had to have the patience of a saint of you really wanted to be an active super, and admittedly, I didn't. Even after nearly four years, I still could only wait for something to happen for so long before I started to get bored and antsy and my mind started to drift and wander. We'd been there for just over an hour at that point, and I was beginning to feel it. And that was with knowing that something was going to happen. Now imagine just being on patrol for hours on end waiting for something to go down and nothing did. Of course, I didn't have to imagine as those days happened far, far more often than not.

I suppose, while I'm on that topic, I could go even further along those lines. When Leon, Chance and I first started out, we originally planned to go out on patrol six days a week and have a day of rest. However, that plan didn't last even two weeks before we quickly changed it to four days and then to three, where we kept it ever since. One reason was because as we were still in high school at the time, we almost instantly discovered that such a schedule could become grueling and overwhelming. Take this example, from Monday to Friday, we would attend school until mid-afternoon, then allow time for homework and dinner, and only then did we go out on patrol. Depending on where we went, our patrols lasted until around midnight or well into the early morning hours. But either way, they definitely cut into our sleeping hours and we paid for it later during school, or at least I did. More than a few times, I found myself dozing off in class, especially from teachers with the droning and monotone voices. Even our three-day schedule proved to be a struggle at times. Now that all of us were in college, our super lives didn't interfere with our normal lives as much, but there were still rough days that happened. We just had to accept that as being a normal part of constant super life.

There was another reason, and that was more local than personal. The truth was, for a city its size, Metroville didn't have that much crime. Oh sure, bad things still happened there, but it was far from places like New Urbem or even Municiberg. Now, don't get me wrong, safe places to live and work were more than great. Everyone, supers included, wanted that. However, it kinda put us in a catch-22 position, as supers worked to make places safer, but safer places didn't give supers much work. I said before that our base was in Metroville, but that was almost solely because the three of us lived there. However, most of our patrols happened in Municiberg, with Centralia coming up second, and Metroville itself a distant third behind both. But even in Municiberg, seeing any kind of action was very rare and, as I mentioned, we struck out far more often than getting hits. For us, just having one thing happen during our patrols was considered a success. Despite all that, I wasn't gonna complain, though. As I said, we preferred safe places, and we still did our jobs there and elsewhere, and wherever crime happened, that was where we were gonna be.

And that brings us back to the mall. There was definitely the feeling of Christmas season in the air. Many of the buildings and trees in the area as well as the lighting posts in the parking lots were covered in lights and other holiday decorations. Christmas music was being played throughout the many loudspeakers in the lots. Lastly, many people were leaving the stores with gifts of all sorts and sizes, from tiny toy dolls to large televisions and appliances. With all that, even with my growing boredom, it was hard not to get caught up in the holiday spirit.

I wasn't the only one. _**"**_ _ **Twas twenty-one days before Christmas,"**_ Chance started an impromptu rhyme through the tiny receivers that each of us wore inside our right ear canals, _**"and all across the mall, people were scurrying around, looking for gifts both big and small."**_

Leon then joined in. _**"They went over this way, and they went over that way, to find the presents to surprise their children with on that very special day."**_

With a smile, I added my own line to finish. **"But unbeknownst to them, evildoers may came to roam. But we, the Triangle, are here to protect them, to ensure they make it safely home."**

" _That was really, really nice,"_ Mom said. _"Bravo, all of you. But let's try to keep the line clear, okay?"_

" _Aw, but it was really getting good,"_ Chance said. _"You don't want to add in a line of your own, Electricia?"_

" _Later, maybe,"_ Mom conceded.

Just then Leon came on. _"Hey guys, head's up. Got something over here by th_ _e north entrance."_

My boredom vanished and I instantly became totally alert. I looked to the north, but unfortunately, because of my position, I couldn't see much in that general direction. I didn't want to take flight yet and blow the surprise, so I moved on foot quickly but quietly across the rooftop of the building I was on.

" _What do you see?"_ Mom asked Leon.

" _A black van with tinted windows and a blue stripe,"_ he replied. _"That's the one we're supposed to be on the watch for, right?"_

" _I think so,"_ Chance answered. _"I'm on my way."_

"Me, too," I said. "Don't do anything stupid until we get there, just in case it's them."

" _Hey, when have I ever did anything stupid while on the job?"_ Leon protested.

Even while running, I couldn't help but groan and roll my eyes. "Do you _**really**_ want me to answer that?"

" _Enough, you two,"_ Mom ordered. _"I'm almost to you now and I can see the van from here. Looks like our target vehicle."_

I reached the edge of the building and could now see the van from that position. It was an older model black colored van with blue stripes which ran down its sides and had extremely dark tinted windows. It was creeping almost as slowly as possible across the parking lot. Everything about that van screamed suspicious, and I instinctively tensed myself, waiting for something to happen.

Just seconds later, something did happen. The van pulled up close to the mall's main entrance where large crowds were exiting, many of them with gifts. Suddenly, the side door flew open and a group of six masked and armed men jumped out and and swarmed the crowd. I could hear the screams of surprise and terror from the shoppers as the men made threats and demands and ripped gifts and purses away from them. One of the men even knocked down a young girl, probably no more than eight years old, just so he could snatch a video game system out of her hands. My hands clenched and my eyes narrowed as I was angered by what I was seeing.

" _Go, go, go!"_ Leon shouted over the receiver.

I didn't need to be told twice as my aura had already formed and I shot up into the air and then dove towards one of the men. He was so busy with the robbery that he didn't even notice me coming at him until the last possible moment, at which point I rotated my body in the air and I did a literal flying kick right to his chest. The impact propelled him into a nearby lamppost, where he instantly slumped down to the ground.

"Supers!" I heard one of the men shout to his buddies.

"Everyone down!" I yelled to the patrons as I turned my attention to the next closest robber and blasted the gun out of his hand with a fireball before he could get a shot off. I then lit my other hand on fire and aimed it at him. "Stay," I told him, and he raised his hands in surrender.

There were still four more robbers left. Leon got the drop on one of them while under camouflage, and with his expert martial art skills, he was able to put him down quickly. Chance had changed into a Bengal tiger and actually leaped onto the top of the van before he pounced onto another robber. With a tiger growling and snarling in his face, the man was all too happy to give up. The final two robbers had decided to cut their losses and tried to flee on foot, but they didn't get very far. Mom ambushed one of them from behind a car and grabbed one of the men by his arm. She then sent a surge of power into the man which instantly knocked him out. At the same time, she aimed her hand at the final robber and sent a lightning bolt in his direction. The blast hit him square on his back and he was completely out cold before he fell to the ground.

Six armed criminals, all of which were taken down in no more than twelve seconds, and also done without a single shot being fired and no injuries to any innocent bystanders. Not bad at all.

It wasn't quite over yet, though. There was still one guy left, their getaway driver who was still in the van. When he saw what was going on, he put the van in gear and stepped on the gas, causing the wheels to screech and nearly running over a few shoppers as he sped through the lot in an attempt to escape the scene.

" _Phoenicia, Changeling, go after him,"_ Leon said over the receiver. _"Electricia and I will stay here and-"_

He didn't finish as the van was passing by a video rental store. At that moment, a wave of clear blue energy came from behind the store and instantly created a thick wall of ice. The van had no time to stop and smashed into the wall, which completely wrecked its front end. The driver clearly wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

" _And_ _everyone can just forget what I said,"_ Leon muttered.

I flew over to the crash in time to see the cause of it glide into view from behind the ice wall. It was a young woman in a skintight suit that was mostly black and silver but had blue and purple highlights in certain areas. She also wore a sleek helmet that covered most of her head and face and had the same color patterns. Lastly, on her feet, she wore specialized air boots that made her hover a couple of inches from the ground and enabled her to move around almost exactly like an Olympic ice skater. She gave me a slight smile as I approached her.

"You missed one," she said.

"And hello to you, too, Cryogen," I greeted her with a smile of my own. "What brings you out here?"

"You guys weren't the only ones to get tipped off about this, you know," she replied.

Cryogen was a fairly new super to Metroville, having debuted just over two years earlier, but she was already making a name for herself. Not even six months into the beginning of her active service, she made national headlines by taking down one of the country's largest drug smuggling rings virtually single-handed. She again got headlines earlier in the year when she saved the entire crew of a sinking container ship by encasing the hull in a massive sheet of ice which kept it afloat just long enough for help to arrive. With those two massive successes under her belt as well as the countless much smaller actions she participated in, it was very easy to see why Cryogen had gotten so popular with people in such a short time.

However, unlike most supers, she was also very popular under her normal identity as well, at least in this region of the country. Her real name was Chase Conway, rising star news anchorwoman and investigative reporter for KMVL First News 7. She was hired to the company about a month before her super debut, and she also quickly made a name for herself under her regular persona. Not even eight months after she first appeared on the airwaves, she exposed a massive tax fraud and evasion scheme at a local corporation which resulted in the mass resignations of its top leadership and most of its board of staff. She also uncovered the entire workings of a fraudulent company which scammed hundreds of senior citizens out of their hard-earned live savings. With those two success stories as well as a few others under her belt, it was very easy to see why if you wanted to get to the truth and expose the real stories, you put Chase Conway on the case.

Before I continue on with the story, yes, I'm going to answer the obvious question. How did Cryogen compare to the other well known super with cold powers, Frozone? For starters, she greatly respected him and everything he did, so much so that she studied his history and watched his old interviews to better understand him and to also to see if there if there was anything that could help her with her own powers. She wanted to do a true interview with him, but as he had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth some years earlier, that didn't look very likely anytime soon, if ever.

That said, she absolutely hated how she was always compared and even scrutinized against him. She wanted to be judged and respected on her own merits and actions, to be known more as 'Cryogen' and less as 'the female Frozone'. She even got really irritated one time when an interviewer pressed her on that comparison while on the air. None of that was new, though. As I previously said to Mom, comparisons between supers had been going on since we first appeared, and it would continue to happen well into the future.

One final, partly amusing to add. If there was one thing that people loved about Cryogen over Frozone, it was the way she moved around. As we all know, Frozone got around the city by using his powers to lay down ice paths for him to skate on. It looked really flashy and cool, of course, until you were a driver who had to use roads which were suddenly made temporarily impassible by those same ice paths. Even in the heat of summer, it still took time for all that ice to melt. Cryogen could do the same thing if she wanted, and actually had done so a few times in the past when it was an emergency, but she chose to mainly use her air boots to get around, probably to the endless relief of many drivers.

"I'm not surprised you'd find out," I said.

Her smile grew bigger. "Of course not. Well, it looks like you guys have things in hand here, so as much as-"

She stopped as the man in the van kicked open the driver side door and attempted to get out. She shook her head, sighed, and raised a finger.

"One moment," she said to me, and then turned her head towards the van and let loose her extremely powerful ice breath, the force of which blew the man back into the van, and then pushed the vehicle itself up against the wall of the store, where it quickly became encased in ice. He certainly wouldn't be escaping from that, not until someone chiseled their way to him.

"Now, as I was saying," she continued, "as much as I'd like to stay here and celebrate with you and your adoring and grateful fans, I really need to get going. Take care, and say hi to your mom and friends for me."

I nodded. "Will do. Later, and thanks."

She nodded back. "Anytime." With that, she 'skated' on her air boots back behind the store and out of sight.

I headed back to the others and the growing crowd of very thankful shoppers, but not before I stopped to pick up a package that was dropped by one of the robbers. Mom was just finishing up restraining the last of the men while Leon and Chance were busy with the crowd. I moved through the crowd, taking a few moments to acknowledge their thanks before I found the young girl from earlier and handed her the game system that had been stolen from her.

"Here you go," I said to her with a warm smile.

"Oh thank you!" she exclaimed and gave me a tight hug. "Thank you so much!"

"You're very much welcome," I told her as I returned her hug. My eyes started tearing up. That moment was what being a super was really all about.

"Are you okay?" I asked her when the hug ended. "You're not hurt, are you?"

"No, I'm fine," she replied. "Just..still a little scared."

I placed my hand on her shoulder. "What's your name?"

"Melissa," she answered.

"Well, Melissa," I said. "It's perfectly natural to still feel that way, especially after an experience like this. But don't let what happened tonight completely ruin your Christmas spirit forever. It's still a happy and joyful time to celebrate. And remember this, no matter what, there will be people who look out for you, even at times when it doesn't seem like it. When things look down, look up. Okay?"

"Okay," she said with a smile. "Thanks for saying that. It makes me feel better."

Before I could say anything else, a woman who I presumed was the mother pushed her way through the crowd and embraced her daughter in a long and tearful hug. She then did the same to me and couldn't stop with her thanks. Admittedly, there were times that I felt a little weirded out when people did that, especially when the situation didn't really call for it, but those were rare, and I could almost literally feel the very genuine happiness and relief coming from her. Eventually, she released me and left the scene with her daughter, but not before Melissa turned around and gave me a smile and wave, both of which I returned.

I'll say it once again, it was those moments that made being a super truly worthwhile.

Normally after a takedown of criminals, it would just be a matter of waiting for the police to come and take them away, or, in some cases, we would deliver them to the police ourselves. However, because we were at a mall in the middle of the holiday shopping season, it took no time at all for our simple wait to become an impromptu meet-and-greet. Many people came up to us and wanted to take our pictures, sign autographs and some of their gifts, or just talk and ask questions. None of us minded that at all, but we had to take turns between doing all that and watching over the criminals. I don't think the criminals liked all the attention they were receiving, but it wasn't like any of us cared about that. Maybe they should had thought twice before they decided to rob a massive place that was full of people if they didn't want all that attention in the first place.

After about ten minutes, the police came and cordoned off the area. Probably to the robbers' immense relief, the officers immediately arrested all six of them plus the getaway driver in the van, which I had to help out my using my powers to melt the ice just so they could get to him. We then spent about the next fifteen minutes giving them a full report on what exactly happened. When that was done, and after signing a few more autographs for some of the officers, we decided it was finally time to leave the scene, and after we acknowledged the crowd one last time, we departed in our own ways: I formed my aura and flew away, Mom grabbed a nearby power line and turned into an electric pulse to travel through the grid, Chance turned into a bald eagle and also flew away, and Leon turned invisible and simply ran away from the area.

We earlier set up a rendezvous point at a secluded area about a mile away from the mall. It was an old industrial area which was well away from busy roads and completely deserted. In other words, it was perfect for our needs of privacy. Mom got to the location first, followed by me and then Chance. Leon, who was moving on foot, would take some time getting there. Dad was there waiting for us in Mom's SUV. He smiled and waved to us.

"Everything go well?" he asked as we approached.

"Perfectly," Mom replied.

"Yep, just the way we like it," I added, and I gave Chance a high-five.

"Are we clear?" Mom asked Dad.

He looked at a handheld device which scanned the immediate area for people. He then gave us a thumbs up. "You're good."

Chance and I removed our masks while Mom took off her helmet and pressed a hidden button that made it fold up into a compact mirror. We then removed our gloves and boots. After that, Mom opened up the rear of the vehicle and pulled out our bags which contained our regular clothing while putting away our boots, gloves, and mask into the hidden compartment which was built into the floor. We proceeded to put on our clothes over our suits. If there was one thing that I liked about the late fall and winter months, it was that we could do that with no problem. If it was in the spring and especially the summer, we either went directly home or, if we had to directly go somewhere else, we went to separate areas so that we could completely undress out of our suits with some privacy.

We had just finished dressing when Leon finally arrived. "I'm gonna keep saying this," he said, slightly out of breath, "We need a supermobile."

"And I'm gonna keep saying this," Chance told him. "We're college students. Being broke is a way of life."

Leon just grumbled a reply as he changed. When he was done, we all got into the SUV and Dad pulled out of the area and onto the streets. But we weren't going home, not yet at least. He was taking us to a parking garage a couple of miles away where Leon left his car. He still had the black coupe that Violet bought him four years ago as a replacement for his rustmobile which got blown up. He still kept his promise not to use it as our official supermobile, but nothing was said that he couldn't drive it to a reasonable distance of where we needed to go. There was a reason he drove it out there, and that reason was…

"Pizza Planet?" he asked.

"Pizza Planet," Chance agreed.

"Pizza Planet," I joined in. "Mom? Dad?"

"I'm good," Dad said.

"Same here," Mom said. "But you three have fun."

Not long after we first became active, Leon, Chance, and I started a tradition that if any patrol or single mission ended without any injuries or, god forbid, deaths to innocent people, we'd celebrate the occasion by going to Pizza Planet. So far, most of them ended that way with few injuries and, thankfully, no deaths. We hoped to keep it that way.

Dad pulled up to the parking garage where Leon's car was, and as the three of us started to get out, Mom said, "Before you go..." She then said in a somewhat dramatic voice, **"After defeating our foes, we retired from the scene, our jobs now done, and we leave the safe and grateful citizens behind, for them to go home, to have dinner, and to have fun.**

" **But we have one thing to say to them as we vanish from their sight. 'A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.'"**

The three of us applauded while Dad just looked at her perplexed. "Wow, that was really good," Leon said. "I thought you wouldn't do that."

"I did say later, remember?" Mom said.

"Is there something I missed here?" Dad asked.

"I'll tell you about it later," Mom told him. She then said to us, "Enjoy yourselves."

"Will do," Chance said.

"Later Mom, Dad," I said.

We got out of the SUV, and as they drove off, Leon asked me, "Have I ever mentioned you have a really cool Mom, Jess?"

"I don't know," I answered with a smile. "I don't think I heard it over the hundred other times you said that. Come on, I'm starved and good food awaits."

"No argument from me and my stomach," Chance said.

We laughed as we got into the car and headed to Pizza Planet, our spirits high and ready to celebrate a night gone perfectly.

If only it had remained so.


	5. First Strike Part Two

**Chapter 4**

 **Needlewood Hills**

 **6:56 p.m.**

 _ **Villain's POV**_

Ah, yes, Needlewood Hills.

That area had some history here and there. Native Americans had lived there for thousands of years and built settlements and burial grounds all over. A few of those ruins were still around and it was even said that some of them were haunted. Did I believe it? Maybe, maybe not. Was never really interested in poking around them to find out. I'll leave those stories and findings for the crazy and insane ghost hunters who always went there.

Around the mid 18th century, Spanish explorers scouted around the area and built a mission complex in one of the valleys. Much of it still existed to this day and it became a pretty popular tourist attraction. My parents took me and my siblings there twice. Loved it, still had the pictures and postcards.

In the 19th century, an expedition from the east built a fort and trading post on one of the larger hills. It was called Fort Needles, named after one of the leaders of the expedition, Jonathan Needles, and yes, Needlewood Hills was named after both. The fort itself was long gone, but there was a marker where it once stood. Not close to a tourist attraction as the mission and other areas were, but it was still something for people to read and take pictures of.

Not much happened there in the 20th century. Most of it was turned into a state park in 1933. The few areas that weren't were opened up for development and people crammed as many high scale houses as they could into those spots. There was the Needlewood Field Laboratory on the very southern edge which was well known for rocket sciences and nuclear physics. The massive corporation ATI had part of its sprawling testing facility bumped up right against the northeastern side. Like I said, not much.

So there's a little history lesson. What did that have to do with anything? Nothing, really. I just liked history. And speaking of, I myself had a day of history there some time ago, about twelve miles from where I currently was. What exactly happened? Well, that's an entire story by itself, but in order to tell it, I have to talk about me and Kyra first.

I knew her as Kyra Walker for a few years before she married and became Kyra Wolverton. She was of Native American descent, Navajo, to be exact, and while she acknowledged it every now and then, she didn't make anywhere near a big deal out of it as other people would. Kind of interesting then that her suit and mask had tribal art and patterns on them, although it was possible those weren't her idea. Edna Mode always had a way of forcing her ideas on our suits, whether we liked it or not. If there was anything about her heritage that Kyra was really proud of, it's the fact that one of her uncles was a World War II code talker. Thought that was really cool when she told me that.

As for her own personal history, Kyra and her family was forced to relocate from her tiny Arizona town to the city of Metroville because she accidentally fried a young boy to death with her powers. Tragic, but it didn't stop her from joining the party at the age of fifteen. Say what you like, she was clearly a strong person to come back from something like that. That was just a part of her personality, and she was never one to back down when the going got tough, and that included when her own personal beliefs clashed completely with those of her parents.

Okay, what did I mean by that? Well, it's like this. Kyra grew up in a great home, with great parents and three great older brothers. A pretty great life, in other words. There was just one little bit of a problem, though. See, Kyra's parents were supers themselves, obviously, but were among the tiny handful who permanently swore off using their powers. Why? Oh, it was simple. They believed that man was never meant to have godlike powers and thought of them as a curse rather than a blessing. I personally thought that was a load of crap, but it really wasn't any of my business.

As about as obvious as it could get, whatever garbage the parents believed, they wanted their children to believe also. Luckily, Kyra, being the free-spirited and independent person that she always was, had none of that and made her point more than clear that she strongly disagreed with her parents on that topic. Now, you may think that would had came to a head when the ban was lifted, right? Nope. In fact, in a shocking reversal, her parents actually gave her their blessing. Oh, they still believed powers were bad, but supposedly, since they knew Kyra was such a head strong person, she would had rebelled against them at some point anyway, so they figured it was best to just go along with it and avoid the drama. And so, with the green light, it would be just over three years later that she blazed onto the scenes as Blazestone.

Ah, yes, Blazestone. Or more specifically, Blazestone II. As many know, she was the second iteration of the character. The first Blazestone was a Golden Age super who ended up being yet another sacrifice to whiny brain boy's walking black balls of death. Contrary to popular belief, they weren't related at all. They never even knew each other. So how and why did Kyra become the new Blazestone? That's a little interesting tale by itself.

Okay, for quite a time, from about when she was ten to just a few months before her debut, she called her super ego Pyranima. Well, it was unique, and I had to admit, I liked it better than Blazestone, but I kept that to myself. So what was up with the name change? The idea actually came from one of her mentors. She told Kyra a story from when she was a child. One night, her house caught fire and her parents got out, but she and her younger sister were trapped. Then, out of nowhere, a woman ran through the flames, grabbed them both, and got them out, keeping the fire at bay just long enough to do it safely. From that point on, Blazestone became her favorite super.

So I suppose Kyra had been inspired enough by her mentor's tale that she did her own research on Blazestone, and it didn't take long for her to think of the former super as a role model and even felt a kinship towards her. She really wished she had a chance to meet Blazestone, but alas, she died only a couple of years prior to that point. Still, the only way she felt that she could truly honor Blazestone's legacy and memory was to assume the very name herself, and that was how Kyra became the new Blazestone.

So where do I come into this? I heard about Kyra the moment she first hit the streets, but we didn't meet face-to-face for the first time until just over three years after that. Truthfully, I really wasn't all that impressed. Other than trapping bank robbers behind a raging wall of fire on her first day out, she didn't do all that much in the few years after that, and the few things she did do had already been done before by many other supers just as well if not better. She did have spirit, a very optimistic attitude, and was level-headed, which was good, but she needed far more than that to peak my attention. To be fair, I had yet to see the full extent of her powers, but you know what they say about first impressions and all.

So the first time we met was not at all special, but when we met up again nearly a year later, that was a day to remember, not just for both of us, but for many other people. It would actually become among our greatest moments at being supers. I could use a few sentences or paragraphs to give an abridged version of what happened, or we could take a trip back in time and relive the full story. Yeah, I think that last part sounds much better, so let's go back sixteen years into the past…

 **Needlewood Hills**

 **Monday, August 1, 1983**

That day could best be described by just three letters: H-O-T.

It should had been a day for swimming, eating ice cream, just staying in air-conditioned places and watching TV, movies, playing video games, or doing other things. Any other time, I would had been among the many other people doing one or more of those things. But even in a record-breaking heatwave, a super's job was never done. Unfortunately.

And so there I was, sprinting at top speed through traffic, back roads, backyards, and other areas while sweating up an ocean on my face and in my suit and cursing multiple times a minute about the heat. And, of course, the hot air moving past my body as I was running wasn't helping in cooling me down at all. Figures.

And if all that wasn't bad enough, for me, that extremely hot day was about to get much, much hotter.

Even when I first received the call for immediate help, I clearly saw where I needed to go, as well as smelled it in the air, and I didn't need my enhanced senses for either. Nearly all of the greater Metroville area could do the same. Basically, record heatwave plus far less rainfall than normal equaled drought, and drought bred perfect conditions for wildfires. In the early morning hours of the previous day, a small fire broke out somewhere in Needlewood Hills. A day and a half later, that small fire became an out-of-control inferno that incinerated much of the northern part of the hills. From the extremely limited info I got from the call, the fire moved so fast that it trapped people somewhere and they were in danger of being burned alive. Honestly, I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do in a situation like that. I had speed, strength, and senses, but being fireproof wasn't among them, and if things went ass up, even with my super healing, I was just as vulnerable of burning up as any normal person. But the call for help was made, every second that passed was critical, and one part of being a super was improvising on the fly. So, plan or no plan, heat or no heat, I was there. Still, what I wouldn't had given or done for an absolute zero cold drink right then.

I eventually made it to the area where all the emergency services set up their forward post. The fire was a few miles away, but I easily heard it even at that distance, although by how large and intense it was, it was hard to tell how much my super hearing factored into it. So, to no surprise, the first thing I did when I got there was grab one of the many ice-cold bottles of water from a nearby table and downed nearly the whole thing in a few swigs. I then dumped the rest on my overheated forehead. It may had helped a teeny bit. I'd much rather the many firefighters around the area sprayed me down with their water hoses. After all, I was there to help them out...in some way, so a little water in compensation wasn't too much to ask.

At that very moment, from behind one of the fire trucks, out walked Kyra, her signature waist-length black hair billowing in the hot wind and not looking at all affected by the heat in general. It just made me grumble all the more and thought about how great it had to have been to be immune to high heat, like Kyra. She gave me a smile and a nod, and I only returned the nod.

Okay, coming back to the present for a moment, I didn't hate Kyra at the time. I had no reason to. I was just unimpressed with what I'd seen from her at that point. Unimpressed didn't translate to hate or even dislike. I was just neutral in how I thought about her, that was all. All of that would change, though.

So going back to that day, the two of us had barely arrived on the scene when a firefighter ran up to us and said, "Oh, good, you two made it. Follow me, please."

We followed him to an area that had a large tent over it. Under that tent was a number of high ranking emergency personnel. They were gathered around a table and were looking at what seemed to be a map.

"They're here, chief," our escort called out.

One of the men in the small group broke away and came up to us. "Thank you both for coming," he said as he shook both our hands. "I'm Chief Stephen O'Hallorhan."

"Nice to meet you, chief," Kyra said.

"Same," I added. "So we were told you have an urgent emergency here. What's going on?"

He led us over to the table with the map. He pointed to a spot near the bottom center and said, "Here's where we are." He then moved his finger to a marked location which looked to be about five miles to the northeast of us. "Here's Camp Needlewood. I'm sure you know what it is."

"Boy Scout camp," I answered.

"Exactly. About two hours ago, we received a CB transmission from them. Seventy-two scouts and twenty-eight adult supervisors, all trapped there."

"A hundred people in total," I said.

"Why didn't they evacuate earlier?" Kyra asked.

"Bad luck," the chief replied. "The initial stages of the fire took down the phone lines and not long after overtook the two main roads out. They didn't get any warning until it was too late. They can't drive out because of the roads and they can't hike out because the fire will be on them before they get anywhere close to safety. We wanted to try an air rescue but the smoke and winds are keeping the choppers grounded. As of now, it looks like you two are their only hope. Can you do it?"

I looked in the general direction of Camp Needlewood. Nothing but trees between us and the five miles to the camp. But that wasn't the problem. Even with the reason for us being there now clear, to rescue a hundred people from being cooked alive, I still had no real idea how to do it. But, of course, I wasn't going to figure out anything just standing there. We had to get to the camp first, and then I could figure out how to get all of them out.

"How long until the fire reaches them?" Kyra asked.

"Depending on wind, forest, and terrain conditions, anywhere from twenty to forty minutes," the chief answered.

I looked back at the woods. Twenty to forty minutes. That would be cutting it extremely close, with barely any time for any kind of plan for a mass rescue. That mission was going to be one for the records, that was for sure.

"We'll do our damnedest," I told the chief, basically the only real answer I could give.

"Damn right, we will," Kyra joined in. "We'll save everyone there, we promise."

"Thank you, thank you both," the chief said in gratitude. "Is there anything you need from us?"

"Just keep the door open for us," I told him, "but a compass would also be nice."

A nearby firefighter handed the chief a compass after which he handed to me. "Anything else?"

"It might be a good idea to try and contact the camp and tell them we're on our way," Kyra said. "That way they'll be ready to go when we get there and we'll have more time to rescue them."

"We'll get right on that," he said. "Good luck."

"To all of us," I said.

Kyra and I then made our way to the edge of the forest. Doing some calculations in my head, I figured I could reach the camp in ten to fifteen minutes, conditions depending, obviously. That would then leave us at least twenty minutes to come up with a plan.

I handed the compass to Kyra. "I aviate, you navigate," I told her. "Northeast."

"Sure, no problem," she said as she took the compass.

I then knelt down on the ground. "Hop on."

She climbed up on my back and wrapped her arms and legs around me. Kyra wasn't all that big, standing about five seven and maybe coming in around a hundred and twenty pounds, so with my strength I hardly felt her at all.

"Comfy?" I asked.

"Not really," she replied.

"You're fine. So, ready to live dangerously?"

"Always."

"Let's go."

"Giddy up!"

I gave her an almost death glare over my shoulder to which she replied with an almost childish giggle. I just let out an annoyed groan and then started the run, moving as fast as possible while trying to keep Kyra content at least.

"Turn a little more to your right," she told me as she looked at the compass and after I did so she told me, "That's good."

After about a minute of our journey, Kyra asked, "So where's your partner in crime? You two are always together. Kind of weird seeing just you here."

"Busy," I replied. "Has a kid to take care of now, remember?"

"Oh, yeah."

"And along those lines, I hear you and Brian are hitching up. Gonna be a married woman before you graduate out of college, huh?"

"Well, what can I say? When you just click with someone so completely that you know they're the one, why wait?"

I smiled. "Well, maybe that's _a_ reason, but we both know the other real one. It's because his family owns two restaurants and you want all that expensive food for free, not to mention you're plotting and biding your time until you're able to take the business over and build your own restaurant empire. Am I right?"

"Oh, drat," she joked in a way over-the-top sad voice. "You discovered my evil plan. Oh, boo-hoo. Woe is me. Whatever am I gonna do now?"

"Set your sights higher," I offered. "Drive-in fast food places are where it's all at."

I heard her snort with laughter. "Drive-ins? Really? You know those pretty much died out, right?"

"Exactly, and that's why no one will see their resurgence coming. You can get ahead of the curve before there's even a curve. Place one in one spot, place another in another spot, and so on. Before you know it, you're the queen of your own franchise empire. Total domination of the whole market. The perfect plan, isn't it?"

She laughed again. "You're really crazy, you know that? Just completely, totally insane."

"Thanks," I said with a grin. "But seriously, congrats on your engagement, Mrs. Kyra Kay Walker Wolverton. Wow, that's a mouthful."

"Thanks," she said, "and yeah, that will be a mouthful, but your full name still takes the cake. So, how about you? Did you find your special someone yet?"

"No," I replied. "Not really looking for anyone right now, to be honest."

"That's too bad. I mean, I know why, but don't give up. There's someone out there for everyone, and you'll know that person the moment you first see them."

"Hmm, maybe." I didn't want to talk about that subject, so I just switched to another. "Damn, it's hot out here. Should've grabbed more water before we left."

"Yeah, it's a little warm today," Kyra said.

I scoffed. "A _little?_ Oh, yeah, must be nice to be resistant to heat. Lucky you."

"Hey, hold on," she protested. "Just some info, yeah, I'm mostly heat resistant, but I can still feel it. I even sweat just like everyone else if it gets too hot." She then sighed. "But if it makes you feel any better, my cold tolerance sucks. Anything below sixty and I'm shaking like a leaf in a windstorm."

"Well, nice to know that little secret," I said.

"Speaking of weather," she said, "we might be in for a problem when we get there."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Did you notice those clouds over the fire area? Those were really nasty looking pyrocumulus clouds."

"Okay, I'm gonna play dumb for a moment and I need you to explain what the hell you're talking about," I told her.

"Alright, the abridged version," she said. "Massive fires can create their own weather patterns. That could either help or hinder efforts to put them out. Those clouds over this fire don't look they're gonna be helping us today."

"Great, as if this day can't get any better," I muttered sarcastically. "Even Mother Nature wants to screw with us in so many ways today. And it's just us two out here? Why not get Frozone also? Where the hell is he when we need him? Or, hell, why not try for the Incredibles themselves? They can't all be that busy doing God knows what."

"Frozone doesn't really do all that much these days anyway," Kyra explained. "Rumor is he's semi-retired, possibly forced to because of his wife. As for the Incredibles, well, Ultraviolet and Elastigirl still haven't made up yet from what happened at Metro Heights Mall. I've heard their fights and arguments are just as vicious and brutal as ever. That's causing the entire family to not be nearly as active as they used to be."

"Really? Still?" I said in exasperation. "It's been, what, nearly three years now? I get it, Violet lost her future fiance in a bomb explosion. That's truly a very tragic thing to happen to anyone. I mean, I know what it's like to lose loved ones in that kind of way. But, damn it, she needs to start moving on from that. This constant pity party and lashing out at her mom isn't doing anyone any favors. Hell, it wasn't even Helen's fault that happened to begin with. All this is doing is tearing a great super family apart and getting the rest of us caught in the fallout."

"When you lose the love of your life, people react in very different ways," she said. "Everyone handles grief and loss in their own way, some good, some bad. I completely understand why Violet is like this now, but I also totally agree with you that she's not handling this well at all. She clearly needs therapy and counseling."

"Clearly," I agreed.

The rest of the run was mostly done in silence, with Kyra giving me basic directions to keep me going northeast. After nearly fifteen minutes passed since the start of the run, right about the very moment I started to wonder if we were even headed in the right direction in the first place, we suddenly burst out of the trees and headed straight at a building. I instantly stopped running and we skidded to a halt just an inch from the wall.

"We're here," I announced.

"Yeah, I can sort of see that," Kyra replied.

She hopped off my back and I took the briefest of moments to rest up before we entered the camp. The building that we almost ran into looked to be a maintenance shed. Both of us then looked around to survey the grounds. It looked like your basic camp, with a main lodge and a scattering of cabins and other buildings, all of which surrounded a large lake. The entire camp was nestled within a small valley, with hills rising above it to the north and west, and it was mainly to the west where the fires were coming from. We could see them clearly from that spot, the flames which were reaching dozens of feet above the trees and moving rapidly in our direction. The smoke and clouds from the fire were also heading towards us, and Kyra was right. All of that did look nasty.

"How long do you think we have?" she asked me.

I did a quick calculation in my brain. "Maybe seven minutes, give or take a couple," I answered.

"Then we better get started," she said.

No sooner had the words left her mouth that we heard a man shout, "There they are!"

We turned around and saw four men on top of the main lodge, with two of them spraying down the building with garden hoses in an obvious attempt to save it from the oncoming fires. One of the men jumped down from the roof and ran towards us. Kyra and I also ran towards him and the three of us met halfway.

"Thank God you got here!" he greeted us and shook both our hands. "We got a message from the fire department that said you were coming."

"Are you in charge here?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he replied. "Tom Danielson. I run the camp."

"What's the situation?" Kyra asked.

"The situation?" He let out a dry and humorless laugh. "The situation is that someone dropped the damned ball. Giving us literally no warning about the fire until it was too late for us to get out of here. If we survive, I'm gonna make sure someone goes to jail over this." He let out a breath and then continued. "Anyway, we got everyone huddled up in the basement of the lodge and we're doing our best to protect them, but it won't be enough. When the fire gets here, it'll just sweep over the camp and incinerate everything in its path. I hope you two have a plan, because if you don't, we're all dead."

"I can try to absorb and deflect the fire around the camp," Kyra offered. "But truthfully, I've never attempted to do that with a fire anywhere near this massive and intense. It might be too much even for me. The best I can possibly do under these circumstances is protect the main lodge."

"Yes," Tom agreed. "The lodge needs to kept safe at all costs. The rest of the camp is expendable."

"Then that's our plan right there," I said. "Saving the lodge is our top priority. Let's stay safe and work together, and we'll all get out of here in one piece. Deal?"

"Deal," Kyra and Tom said together.

I nodded. "Then let's do it."

So, when did that old saying _**'The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry'**_ come into play? Almost immediately after we spoke. We hardly had time to head to the lodge when the winds suddenly shifted back towards the fire. The shift was so sudden and violent that it actually caused us to stumble on our feet. We saw the reason we looked back at the fire.

"Oh my God," Kyra said in a soft and slow voice.

She spoke for all of us right then, although I'd had used stronger words if it was me. As a little note, there were few things in this world that truly terrified me, and what caught our attention was added to that very small list. What we saw, from my point of view, was something that I'd never seen before or since, and hoped to never see again. It looked like a tornado made completely out of fire and smoke formed inside the most intense part of the inferno and instantly grew in size and power. It made a roaring sound which was much louder than the fires themselves. And, of course, it was making a beeline towards us. It really was like Mother Nature had a beef with us that day.

"What...what the hell is that?" I almost shouted above the noise.

"It's a fire whirl," Kyra answered. "Large fires can sometimes create them. But I've never seen or heard of one this massive before. It's almost like a real tornado."

"Is there anything you can do to stop it?" Tom asked.

"I have an idea, but I don't know if it'll work. Again, I've never tried this before. You might want to get to shelter anyway, look after your scouts."

"Understood," he said. "Good luck, and whatever happens, thank you both for coming here."

"To us all," Kyra said, "and you're very welcome."

Tom ran to the lodge and we turned our attention back to the fire whirl. I swore it actually grew even larger and more powerful and was still headed our way. It would be on top of us in a minute.

"I guess it's do or die time," I said.

"Yep," Kyra agreed. She then blew out a long breath. "Well, here goes nothing."

Her face took on a look of concentration and her eyes glowed almost blindingly bright in rapidly alternating colors of red, yellow, orange, white, purple, and blue. Swirls of energy and sparks with the same changing colors appeared around her hands. She then held her arms and hands out in front of her and the energy swirls turned into more like energy tendrils of which shot out towards the fires around the whirl. The moment the tendrils touched the fires, the flames instantly traveled through them and into her hands and arms, making them glow bright orange as her body absorbed the energy. She created more tendrils and drew even more of the fire into herself. After about fifteen seconds, there was a clear change in the fire whirl as it started to lose size and power.

"Hey, I think you're doing it," I said in an awestruck tone. "Keep going."

"That's the plan," she told me without breaking her attention.

She continued to pull the fires around the whirl into her body until they were almost extinguished, and that was causing the vortex to shrink and dissipate rapidly. As the whirl was powered by the heat of the fire, by taking away its source of energy, Kyra was literally choking the life out of it. A few more seconds, and the fire whirl was completely gone. The danger, at least from that, was over.

Needless to say, that was the moment Kyra finally impressed me.

The energy tendrils and swirls around Kyra's hands stopped and her eyes returned to normal. She swayed a little on her feet, and when she turned to look at me, she seemed to be really giddy and hyper, almost exactly like someone who had a little too much to drink.

"I knew I could do it," she said, and then immediately burst into giggles.

"Yes, you did," I said. "Hey, you okay there?"

"Yeah, maybe more than okay," she replied in a somewhat loopy tone. "Kinda feeling like I'm on the mother of all sugar rushes."

"That, or taking in all that fire literally made you drunk or high, or both."

"Or that, too." And she once again started giggling hysterically and uncontrollably. I just groaned and turned away, but I had a hidden smile of my own.

After a few moments, Kyra took deep breaths to get herself under control, and then said, "Okay, we're not out of danger yet. There's a whole lot of fire and embers around us, and this whole camp can still go up. The main lodge is still our priority, but I think we have time to save the entire camp if we work together and quickly."

"What do you suggest we do?" I asked.

"I can get up high on the lodge's roof and watch out for fires from there," she explained, "while you can get a bucket or something and use water from the lake to put out any hot spots."

I nodded. "Sounds good. Let's do it."

She climbed to the top of the lodge while I grabbed a nearby barrel instead of a bucket and filled it up with lake water. The fires had almost entirely surrounded the camp by then and were encroaching on the actual grounds extremely fast. We first focused on the northern parts as they were the most at risk. Kyra used her powers to both keep some of the fires at bay as well as draw other fires that were threatening structures into herself while I used my speed to move around and douse the flames and hot spots that she couldn't reach. It didn't take long though until we were forced to split our efforts to other areas of the camp. Despite that, however, the two of us were handling the whole thing really well.

At one point, I heard Kyra yell, "Hey, still doing okay over there?"

"I can do this all day!" I shouted back. "How about you? Not yet wasted by all that fire, are you?"

"Nah, I'm good!"

"Good, cause if you pass out, I'm not carrying your ass all the way home, you know!"

I heard her laugh out loud. "Aww, what's wrong? Don't wanna carry a damsel in distress home to her castle and to her Prince Charming?"

"How about you have your Prince Charming drive his fancy 'Vette up here instead and he can take you back to the castle himself!"

"Ha, he won't even take his baby out in a light shower! Good luck getting him to drive it through a wildfire!"

"Wimp!"

There wasn't much more talk between us other than basic directions as we continued to work together to prevent the fires from breaching the campgrounds. A funny note, for all of the complaining I did earlier about the high daytime heat and the soon-to-be intense heat of the fires, I didn't notice at all during that time as I was too busy trying to save the camp. It's funny how many things you don't think about when your entire concentration is completely focused on accomplishing just one.

After possibly the longest ten minutes of our lives, it was starting to look like our battle against nature had been won. The fires had mostly moved on by then, and, except for quite a few scorch marks, Camp Needlewood remained intact. Even then, I knew it had to had been among the greatest heroic feats done by supers in a very long time. Not bad for a day's work. Really got you in the feels.

"So, what do you think?" I asked Kyra as she hopped down from the roof of the lodge. "Are we good?"

She closed her eyes and concentrated. Other than being able to control fire, she also had the ability to detect it within a very wide radius from her position. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes and shook her head. "I'm not feeling any fire in the camp. I think we're in the clear."

I pumped my fist in the air. "Aw, yeah, baby!" I exclaimed. "That's how we do things in Metroville! Woo!"

"Yeah," she joined in. "This is how we supers roll!"

We gave each other a few high fives which were immediately followed by a loud clasping of hands and a few handshakes. We then just stood there for a few moments to totally take in our accomplishment.

"We really do get along well together," Kyra said. "We should do this more often."

"You flirting with me?" I asked her with a smile.

She laughed and gave me a playful shove. "You wish! But seriously, I-"

"Hey, relax, I was just messing with you," I told her. "I know what you meant. Yeah, we do. You know, my friend and I could use a third person among us. I'll bring that up, see where that goes."

She smiled and nodded. "I'd like that."

"So, new partner, think it's time to get everyone here safely home, don't you?"

"Right there with you, new partner."

We entered the lodge and took a look around. The high-end log cabin theme was clear all around, and the whole place was filled with Boy Scout pictures, awards, furnishings, and memorabilia. All of that gave the inside of the lodge a nice, warm and rustic feel that made you feel welcome. It probably would had smelled nice as well if it wasn't mixed in with the extremely thick odor of smoke from the fires.

As for all the people inside, they seemed to be alright. With my sensitive hearing, I could actually pick up at least a dozen or so voices coming up through the floor underneath us. There was only one sure way to find out.

"Hey, everyone!" I called out. "You can all come out now! It's over!"

A few moments later, I heard footsteps coming up stairs, and then a door opened up in front of us and Tom stepped out. He had a shocked look on his face.

"It's over?" he asked. "You done it?"

"Yes, we did," Kyra replied. She then held her hand out towards the entrance and told him, "Come see for yourself."

He did just that and stepped out and looked around. If he wasn't shocked before, he was certainly floored then. He was so overcome with emotion that tears fell from his eyes.

"You did it," he said in a stunned tone. "You saved the entire camp. How? How did you do it?"

"We're supers," I simply told him. "It's what we do."

"Exactly," Kyra agreed. "We're known for doing the impossible."

He shook both our hands vigorously and looked like he really wanted to hug us but backed off at the last moment. "No matter how you did it, you're both true heroes. You hear me? True, honest-to-God heroes!" He hen turned around and yelled at the lodge, "It's okay! You can bring them all out now!"

A few moments later, a steady stream of people, the scouts and their adult supervisors, began to emerge from the lodge. I counted each head as they exited, and in the end, I came up with seventy-two scouts and twenty-seven supervisors. Including Tom, all one hundred people were accounted for. They all looked just as stunned and amazed as Tom was when they saw an intact Camp Needlewood instead of one that was burned to ashes. Then, nearly every scout and even some of the supervisors swarmed us and were talking at once, mainly giving thanks, asking questions, and wanting autographs. We obliged them, but only for a few minutes as our time was very limited.

At one point, a supervisor brought out a camera and wanted to take a group picture with Kyra and I included. He had us all stand in front of the lodge with Kyra, Tom, and myself in the middle and the rest lined up on either side of us in two neat rows. When we were ready, he had us all say, "Needlewood!", and then he snapped the picture. Yeah, I admit there was a moment when I thought of putting bunny ears behind Kyra's head, but I decided against it. It showed that even though I was just barely into my adult years, my childish prank streak still hadn't gone completely away.

It was after the picture was taken that Kyra said to everyone, "So, I think it's time we get you all out of here and safely home, don't you agree?"

There were lots of agreements on that, including from me. At that point, I just wanted to get home and take an hour long cold shower. That, and a super ice cold drink. I had more than enough of the heat to last well into the next year.

We all boarded a bus that was parked next to the lodge. With a hundred people on board, it was a tad bit overcrowded, but still manageable. Tom sat in the driver's seat and started the engine, or at least tried to as it didn't want to turn over. He tried again and again, but no dice. The engine just didn't want to start. I wanted to laugh, but all I did was roll my eyes and blew out a frustrated breath. Of course, _of course_ something else had to screw with us that day. That's how it always was.

"Let me take a look," I offered.

"Go ahead," Tom said.

I exited the bus, popped open the hood, and looked over the engine, hoping my limited knowledge about vehicle engines that my dad taught me when I was a child would finally come into play. Unfortunately, no luck. The surface of the engine looked fine, but I couldn't get really deep into it without any tools. Kyra and Tom joined me.

"Any luck?" Kyra asked.

I shook my head. "Nope, unless there's a AAA around here or the Boy Scouts give out merit badges for auto repair."

"No AAA around here, I'm afraid," Tom said, "and actually, yes, we do have merit badges for auto maintenance, but none of the scouts here have those yet."

"Oh," I said in surprise, not expecting that answer. "Well, um, learn something new every day, I guess."

"So, any ideas?" he asked.

I placed my hands on the front of the hood and looked down to think. It was then that I noticed the two hooks on the bus's bumper. I got on my hands and knees to look under the bus to see if the hooks were attached directly to the frame, which they were.

"I might have one," I said as I got back up. "Do you have any large cable laying around somewhere?"

"Yes, we do, in the maintenance shed," he replied.

"Good. I'll need some of that."

"Gotcha."

As he left, Kyra said, "I see what you have in mind. You want to pull the bus out of here. Will you be okay doing that? It won't be too much weight for you?"

"If I once pulled out a fully loaded cargo jet that was stuck in deep thick mud at an airport, I'm pretty sure I can handle a bus just fine."

"I suppose so, but I'm fairly certain that cargo jet didn't have a hundred people on board, most of them teens and young children."

"I know it won't exactly be a breeze, which is why I want you out here with me and sitting up on the hood, just in case."

She nodded. "Good idea."

Right as she started climbing up onto the hood, Tom came back with a long cable about an inch thick. "Will this do?" he asked.

I gave it a quick lookover before saying, "Yeah, that'll work. Okay, I'll need you to get back on board and put the bus in neutral and steer when we get going. Can you handle a bus with no power?"

"No problem," he replied. "I've done it before."

"Great. Better get back on board, we're about to get going here soon."

"Gotcha. Please try to take it easy with us, though. It's not easy handling a powerless bus without anyone on board, let alone a hundred."

"I'll try, but no promises. It won't exactly be an easy trip to safety either way."

He nodded and got back on board the bus while I wrapped the cable around both hooks and gave a test pull to see if they held, which they did. I then wrapped more of the cable around my hands and then got into position.

I looked over my right shoulder and asked Kyra, "Ready?"

She secured herself a little more on the hood and replied, "Ready."

I then looked over my left shoulder and shouted up at Tom, "Ready?"

He gave me a thumbs up and I nodded. I took a deep breath and said, "Okay, let's get moving."

And obviously Kyra had to joke around some more and said," Yah, mule! Yah!" while pretending to crack a whip.

That time I whirled around and told her, "You do that one more time and you'll be right down here helping me pull this thing, or doing it by yourself. Understand?"

She held up her hands. "Okay, okay," she said through some laughter. I sighed, rolled my eyes, and turned back around, if only to hide a smile of my own.

I took a quick moment and used my enhanced memory skills to bring up the map I saw earlier at the forward post. There was a mile long road which connected Camp Needlewood to a nearby highway. From there, it was just over ten miles back to the forward post if we followed the highway directly. An eleven mile trip in total, not bad. Shame we couldn't go back the way Kyra and I came in and shave six miles off that, but I didn't think that bus had off-road capabilities.

There was one thing I was starting to get concerned about, and that was, well, me. I had an immense amount of stamina, but it wasn't unlimited. Even I could completely wear out if I pushed myself too hard for too long. I had already done so much in a short time that I was starting to feel some fatigue, but that wasn't going to stop me, not until everyone got out of there safely.

I started off by walking slow, mainly to get a feel of the weight I had to pull. The bus plus passengers, which had to weigh well over twenty tons, was well under my limits and moved easily. Satisfied, I started going faster and headed down the main camp road. I wanted to keep to a speed between twenty and twenty-five miles an hour and didn't want to risk going above that.

A couple of minutes later, we reached the intersection where the camp road connected to the highway. I took that moment to look around and take in the devastation. Nothing but blackened trees and ground without a trace of vegetation anywhere. The Camp Needlewood sign at the beginning of the road had been completely charred through. Even though the main blaze had long passed, there were residual fires burning everywhere. Thick smoke still blanketed the area, which make breathing a little difficult. Finally, the two-lane highway itself didn't escape unscathed, either, with large cracks all over the road and even areas where the very asphalt itself had melted from the intense heat. That was going to make the trip somewhat more interesting.

"What a mess," I said.

"Yeah," Kyra agreed, "but remember, this is all natural. Despite what Smokey the Bear wants people to think, wildfires are actually very healthy and beneficial to the environment. In a few years, this entire area will be greener than ever."

"Yeah, I guess that's true. Let's keep going."

"We need to be careful," Kyra cautioned. "It's still too dangerous out here."

"I know," I agreed. "Don't worry too much, though. We got this."

We continued on with the journey. The road, while badly damaged, was still solid so I felt comfortable keeping up my speed. Also, my stamina wasn't taking too much of a hit pulling the bus so I was fine on that front as well. So far, so good.

A few minutes later, the people on the bus began to sing various camping tunes. I didn't pay much attention at first, but then they sang a song which reminded me of another one from years earlier. Almost unconsciously I began to hum that tune to myself.

"That's a nice sounding song," Kyra said. "What is it?"

"Oh, it's something my mom used to sing to me when I was much younger," I answered.

"Ah, I see. As I said, it's really nice." She was quiet for a few moments, and then she said, "I heard what happened to your family. I'm truly sorry."

And just like that, the memories I'd been trying to keep down, especially given our situation and environment, came rushing back in full force.

" _ **LOOK OUT!"**_

" _ **What happened to me? Where is everybody? My parents, brothers and sisters, where are they?"**_

" _ **You were critically injured, but as for the rest of your family...I have the very unfortunate news to tell you that they were all killed. I'm truly sorry for your tremendous loss."**_

" _ **What? No...NO! You're lying! They can't all be dead! Not all of them! They can't be...can't be..."**_

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths to force those memories down and calm myself, and then just simply said, "Thank you."

She must had sensed that she'd hit a nerve, because she didn't say anything else for nearly the rest of the journey. At about two miles to go, we came up to the spot where the hills went steeply upward on one side and steeply downward on the other. It was also more rocky than most of the other surrounding hills. Lastly, the area was notorious for landslides. It stretched along the road for just over a mile so I figured once we got past that point we'd be fully in the clear.

"Do me a favor," I said to Kyra. "Don't make any sudden loud noises."

"I'll try not to, but no promises," she replied. "But seriously, we should be fine. Landslides rarely happen for causes other than heavy rain or flooding."

"Okay, here we go."

I started pulling once again, hoping to get through the area as fast as possible, which at my speed would take about three minutes. However, a large part of my brain was wondering what the big deal was. The chances of a landslide were so remote it shouldn't had been worth thinking about, especially when the conditions were the exact opposite of what usually caused them. Which was why the exact opposite happened and that extremely remote chance turned to a hundred percent when right at the moment we were almost through that area, there was a loud rumbling and cracking sound, and then a large part of the nearby hillside fell right onto the road and blocked the way. I stopped and then had to push back against the bus to get it to stop in time.

At that moment, as I just stared at the newly created roadblock, like before, I came really close to just bursting out in loud, long laughter. On that day, how could I had not expected anything less? Instead, I just turned around to Kyra and said in a mocking voice, _"'Landslides rarely happen for causes other than heavy rain or flooding.'"_

"Hey, I never said they couldn't happen due to other reasons," she protested. "I just said it was extremely rare, that's all. Wildfires have been known to cause landslides, and that's what I'm sure happened here."

Just then, Tom poked his head out of the window and asked, "Hey, is everything okay?"

"We're fine," I replied. "Just give me a few minutes and-"

I stopped speaking as another, much louder rumble filled the air and the ground under my feet started shaking. The rest of the hillside was coming down and was going to bury us underneath feet of rubble in seconds. I could hear the shouts and screams from people on the bus as they clearly saw what was happening.

I just barely had the time to mutter out loud, "Oh, you have got to be _shitting_ me."

To this very day, I was fully convinced that someone or something was out to get us. There was just no other credible explanation of the strange things that happened to us that day.

"Get us out of here!" Kyra screamed.

I looked to the right, to the area that went downhill. It had far fewer trees than the uphill side, but was still very rocky. In a split second, my mind worked out that it was theoretically possible for the bus to travel the hundred feet down the hill without wrecking, with a decent enough driver, that was. But at that moment, theory was better than nothing and I didn't have time to ask questions.

"Turn right!" I shouted to Tom. "Right!"

I grabbed the cable and pulled as fast and hard as I dared to, which most likely caused everyone on board to jerk back in their seats, or wherever they were sitting. Right at the moment we reached the edge, I used my momentum to do a jumping backflip onto the hood, grabbed Kyra around her waist, and then did another jumping backflip onto the roof.

"Hang on!" I yelled to Kyra.

The bus went over the edge as the landslide came crashing down on the spot where we were just seconds earlier. Kyra and I were using the cable to hang on for dear life as the bus bounced and rocked its way down the hill. I don't know how Tom was able to do it, but he managed to thread the needle and find the perfect route down the hill while keeping the bus from rolling over. A few moments later, the bus made it to the bottom of the hill and out onto a mostly grassy area, completely intact save for a couple of blown tires, and probably quite a few battered and bruised people inside and definitely two battered and bruised supers up on top.

After a few moments of gathering my senses, I leaned down over the edge and asked, "Everyone okay in there?"

The question was asked around a few times before Tom gave a thumbs up and said, "Yeah, we're all okay."

I got back up on the roof and turned to Kyra, who looked like she was still recovering from our short wild ride down the hill. "See?" I said with a smile to lighten the mood. "It's like I told you. We had this. And now that the fun's over, you're now free to continue your plans to take over the American restaurant market. I'm telling you, drive-in fast food places. The wave of the future."

She turned to me and gave me the most incredulous look I'd ever seen. After a few seconds, she finally said, "Oh, shut up."

There was a somewhat long quiet moment between us, and then a snicker escaped my mouth, followed by chuckles and then to full blown laughter. Kyra immediately joined in and we both were in complete hysterics as I jumped down to the ground and began pulling the bus toward the forward post, which was now within sight. When we arrived there a couple of minutes later, Chief O'Hallorhan and the other firefighters who rushed towards us were probably amazed by the sight of two things: a bus full of a hundred Boy Scouts and staff which had been guided to safety by two supers, and those same two supers totally caught up in tear-jerking laughter for some strange reason that was completely lost to them.

 **Needlewood Hills**

 **Sixteen years later**

And so that's the story of my little history in those hills. The Hayworth Fire, as it became known, was the second largest fire in the history of Needlewood Hills, and while we did save a hundred people, it ended up killing twenty-two other people, including an entire family of seven. If there was one good thing that came out of the fire, it was that Kyra was right and a few years later, most of the area charred by the fire experienced a super bloom that many people said was the best they'd ever seen. Even I was impressed when I went back to the area to see for myself.

So as expected, our rescue story made headlines around the world. For nearly a whole month, we made appearances on news stations and talk shows locally, nationally, and internationally to retell the story again and again. I had no problem doing that, as it was a good story. We received thousands of letters of thanks and gratitude, including a couple from the Chief Scout Executive of the Boy Scouts and from the President of the United States himself. There was some skepticism from a few people, though, mainly that they couldn't believe a fire whirl of that size and power formed and nearly destroyed the entire camp. I didn't care what they did or didn't believe. Kyra and I, as well as a few other, knew exactly what we saw and that was good enough for us.

Lastly, we were the recipients of two great honors. The first one was that both Kyra and I were the co-winners of the 1983 Superhero of the Year award. It would be Kyra's only one and my first of two. It was very rare for two supers to win the award at the same time, but everyone felt we were more than worthy and the decision was unanimous.

While that was great, I felt the other honor was more touching. On the one year anniversary of the rescue, Camp Needlewood , and all one hundred people who were there that day, dedicated a mural that had been painted on one of the main lodge's walls. It depicted two scenes: Kyra stopping the massive fire whirl with her powers, and me pulling the bus to safety. The dedication message on the mural had our super names, and then read: _ **Camp Needlewood's Guardian Angels. August 1, 1983.**_ I was there by myself to accept the honor as Kyra was pregnant with her first child at the time, but she gave me a message to relay to everyone on her behalf.

Speaking of such, as for Kyra and I? Our friendship started immediately afterward and rapidly grew from that point to over the next five years. She invited me to her wedding, had me meet two of her three kids, and even got a special waiver that had me eat at her husband's restaurants for free. She also taught me her meditation skills, which, admittedly, I still used a little even now. As for our super lives, my friend and I instantly accepted her into our pairing and she proved to be a massive help, giving us new insight into ideas and tactics that we'd never could had done or even thought of without her. Although not official, everyone thought of us as a super team of three and among the best groups out there.

Yep, she proved to be an extremely great and loyal friend and super partner, which was why it was such a shame that she had to die.

Kyra was one of the two now former friends of mine who came down to my home country to find me and bring me back, so I had more than enough reason to put blame on her for what happened to me later on. However, even that may not had been enough if something completely different happened on "The Night". She was the only one out of the five others who showed immense hesitation and didn't instantly place blame and condemnation on me. I saw the massive conflict going on inside her through her eyes. It seriously looked like for a moment, she was going to side with me.

But then, she reached out, touched my wrist, and said with as compassionate a voice as she could make out, _**"Look, just...just turn yourself in, okay? Let the system work. They'll help you straighten this all out**_ _ **and get to the truth**_ _ **. We all can. We'll be there at your side the whole time.**_ _ **Just t**_ _ **rust us, please."**_

And that was the moment she sealed her fate along with the others, because it turned out everything she said was total bullcrap. The so-called "system" completely screwed me over, believing every single word out of the five traitors and not even bothering to look into my own story of what truly went down. And as for being at my side the whole time, surprise, surprise, it turned out to be just another lie in an ever growing list of lies. They were barely there, if at all. Kyra didn't even show up at my sentencing trial. From that moment on, I no longer had any reason to believe anything that came out of her mouth, and hopefully, I'd soon have a reason not to think about her at all.

Through the extremely ingenious and complex coding in the innocent looking letters sent to me while in prison by P, the only person who had been there for me since that whole thing started, I was able to keep a good, but limited, track on all five. And now with the five envelopes I'd received, I learned everything I needed to know about them, especially what their confirmed and future plans were. Because of that, I knew Kyra and her husband had scheduled a trip to the Bahamas on that date to celebrate a second honeymoon. Cute, but for me, it just gave me the perfect opportunity for a first strike.

From the moment I was hauled away from the courtroom to begin serving my false sentence, there was no question of what I wanted, what I _needed_ to do. Still, _how_ to do it was the real question. For most of those ten years, my answer was very straightforward: I'd simply go up to them and make them look at the face of the person they betrayed before they saw nothing else. Believe me, I wanted nothing more to take in their reaction the moment they saw me again after a decade. It would had been well worth it.

However, it was within the last year that I started to change my mind. One thing I learned during my years as an active super was that the direct approach wasn't always the best approach, and there were many times where I had to be sneaky and use misdirection and distractions to keep the focus off my main goals. Now, if I went right up to them and dealt out my personal justice, then people would catch on real quick and I could lose my chance to reach the rest. But, if I made it look like accidents, then it would take time for them to find the pattern. Oh, I was sure they'd figure it out in time, but I hoped that when they did, I'd be finished with my tasks and be long gone.

There was a massive elephant in the room that there was no way around. If I went down that path, then in order to make it look like legitimate accidents, it meant a lot of innocent people needed to be sacrificed along with the five supers. I made my peace with that long ago. It also helped that I remembered how many of those people flipped a one-eighty on me when the supposed "facts" about that night went public, so I felt that I no longer owed them any allegiance. To me, they were just going to be a number on a paper or screen, nothing more.

So, for nearly the last half-hour, I was hidden in a deeply wooded part of Needlewood Hills preparing for what was about to happen. When I sent letters back using the same coding which detailed my plans, P was able to set me up with all the equipment needed to do it. I spent much of that time testing them out and rehearsing the plan over and over until it became virtually automatic.

And now, rehearsal time was over, as one of the devices started beeping, which meant it was picking up a preset transponder frequency closing in. I picked up the device and turned on the screen, which showed a green dot heading in my general direction. It also displayed general info about that dot.

"Hello there, SkyTran 3535," I said to myself.

I then picked up a small radio, put the attached headphones, and turned it on. It was set to Bird Field's air traffic control frequency, and I just barely heard them say, _"SkyTran 3535, turn left heading 105 and contact departure."_

" _Turn left heading 105 and contact departure, SkyTran 3535."_

I turned off the radio and looked up to the sky. It took no time at all for me to spot the flashing lights of the plane coming my way. It was P who provided the info which detailed the flight paths out of Bird Field and the most likely one that particular plane would travel through, and it turned out to be right on the money. Just another thing I was really thankful for.

With that, I picked up the final object for that plan. To normal eyes, it looked like a pair of really oversized binoculars. However, it was far more than just something to use to see great distances. It was actually a very experimental weapon, liberated out of ATI's testing facility not that long ago. I picked up a small metallic cartridge about four inches long and an inch in diameter, slid that into an open slot located in between the lenses, and then looked through them up at the sky, hoping that really crazy weapon worked as advertised.

With night vision mode selected, I easily saw every detail of the plane. I took a moment to look it over before I pressed a button on the left lens casing. That activated a targeting overlay which automatically locked onto the plane. After about ten seconds, the target changed from green to red, which indicated the plane was in range. My finger hovered over another button on the right lens casing, ready to press.

It was that moment that my possibly very last trace of my past heroic life burst out of whatever dark and secret corner of my mind it was hiding in and screamed in my head, _"_ _No, don't do this! It's not too late!_ _There's still time to turn away, live a normal life!"_

Up until that point, I had no idea that part of me still survived, and that was probably why I hesitated. But I knew my window of opportunity was closing rapidly, and if I missed that chance, I most likely wouldn't get another chance for a while, if ever. I had to make a choice.

And so, without thinking any more on it, I pressed the button.

That strange weapon didn't fire a ballistic weapon or a missile, but instead used very complicated and complex engineering to fire an immensely powerful laser which could cut through an inch of solid steel from a mile away. The cartridge I loaded into it earlier was a very focused high energy power cell which was needed to fire the laser, and each shot needed one full cell. That was how powerful and energy intensive the laser was. Now, I had no idea why ATI would build something like that, but I wasn't about to ask questions.

As a little note, in order to hit a target like a plane flying a few thousand feet above you, auto assist helped a little, but what you really needed was very keen eyesight and very steady hands. Luckily for me, I had both. It also helped that the plane was a turboprop instead of a jet, so it flew slower and allowed more time to aim properly. It had no chance.

The laser beam sliced cleanly through the plane's left engine, which sent the propeller flying off and disappearing into the night. Simultaneously, the engine exploded and caused the entire left wing to shear off. The plane then went into an immediate spiraling dive towards the ground. I followed it with my eyes until it disappeared out of my sight. Seconds later, I saw the sky in that direction light up orange, followed soon after by the sound of the explosion.

It was over. The deed was done for the first, and now there were four more to go.

How did I feel at that very moment? Honestly, I didn't feel a thing. Just nothing but cold and dark emptiness where emotion should had been. It only showed how much of my soul had been lost over the last ten years. The voice in my head was now silent, maybe for good. There truly was no going back now. Whatever happened from that point on, I had to live with the consequences until the day I died, whenever that would be.

"Bye, Kyra," I said in a very quiet voice.

I knew I had to make myself scarce before the emergency services came to the area, and so I packed up all my equipment and started the trip back to the cabin, but not before I pulled out my Walkman to hear the final score of the game.

" _To repeat tonight's final score, Municiberg College beat Metro Tech University on a last second field goal to win 34-32 and clinch their third conference championship in four years-"_

"Shit!" I screamed out loud and then punched a nearby tree. My fist went right through the trunk and caused the whole tree to fall over. It did some damage to my hand but I paid it no attention as it was already healing itself. I then ran at super speed back to the cabin, fuming as I did so.

It looked like it wasn't going to be a perfect night after all.


End file.
